Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany

Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, was a son of Robert II and one of the most powerful Scottish princes of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He repeatedly governed the kingdom for his ailing brother Robert III and later for the captive James I.

Albany was widely suspected of responsibility for the death of his nephew David, Duke of Rothesay, though direct proof is lacking. His long rule strengthened his family but left a legacy of factional conflict that James I later destroyed.

In Nigel Tranter’s A Folly of Princes, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Robert III remains king of Scotland in name, but real power is contested within his own family. His son David, Duke of Rothesay, and his brother Robert, Duke of Albany, struggle for supremacy while noble factions choose sides and the authority of the crown steadily weakens. In Nigel Tranter’s The End of the Line, A broken royal marriage agreement, the manoeuvres of the Douglases and Albany’s hunger for power steadily isolate the Dunbars. Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany is treated fictionally in Nigel Tranter’s The Captive Crown.