Elizabeth de Burgh

Elizabeth de Burgh was queen consort of Scotland as the second wife of Robert the Bruce. Captured by English forces in 1306, she spent about eight years in captivity while her husband fought to secure the Scottish throne.

After her release, Elizabeth returned to Scotland and became the mother of the future David II. Her life reflects the personal cost of dynastic warfare, in which royal women could be used as prisoners, hostages and symbols of legitimacy.

Nigel Tranter’s The Path of the Hero King shows Elizabeth de Burgh as Robert Bruce’s captured queen while her husband is reduced to a fugitive rebuilding resistance in western Scotland. The Price of the King’s Peace follows her return after years of English imprisonment and the attempt to restore a royal household damaged by war and bereavement. The Steps to the Empty Throne covers the earlier dynastic calculations that bring Elizabeth into Bruce’s life before his seizure of the crown. Robert Low’s The Lion at Bay returns to the brutal aftermath of Bruce’s coronation, where the capture of his wife and female relatives gives Edward I leverage against the new Scottish king.