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mother,
    If it be male; let it nevertheless not escape sheer destruction.” 11
    These raids by the emperor Severus in A.D . 208 were uncommonly vicious. They did not break the spirit of the northern tribes, but they did succeed on another level. Failing to defeat the enemy that inhabited this harsh wilderness, Severus decided for once and for all to permanently seal them off. As Churchill wrote, Severus “flung his energies into the task of reorganization [along the wall, and] stability was achieved. So great had been the destruction, so massive were his repairs, that in later times he was thought to have built the Wall, which in fact he only reconstructed. He died at York in 211; but for a hundred years there was peace along the Roman Wall.” 12
    The Romans could conduct all the punitive raids they wanted and kill all the Caledonian men, mothers, and babies that they desired, but in the context of history it did not matter. Their empire in Britain had reached its high-water mark, and there were a whole lot of people on the northern side of the wall whom they had not conquered and would never be able to conquer. And thus the peoples of the north, ragged and barbaric though they were, could forever make one important boast: they had never bent a knee to Rome.
    Hundreds of years passed. Differing bloodlines mixed on both sides of the wall. Different forms of government were attempted. On the southern, English side of the wall, the Romans eventually disappeared, replaced as rulers and occupants by a continuing mix of Angles and Saxons, Jutes and Danes, and, eventually, after the 1066 Battle of Hastings, by the scions of the Norman Conquest.
    And on the northern, Scottish side of the wall, a different sort of mixing and adaptation was taking place, leading to the creation of a different sort of people.

3
    Braveheart

                              
    THE SCOTTISH MONARCHS had intermarried and intermingled with the English and the Normans, the French and the Norwegians, until the throne became something of a foreign playground. The Scottish people had kept their distance from this enchantment, assimilating the occasional outsider who came into their midst but not wishing to mimic the ways of the world beyond the next mountain or quick stream. The Scottish monarchs had become fascinated by the goings-on in such places as London and Paris, an ancient version of jet-setting as they cavorted with the foreign glitterati of their day, often living overseas for years at a time. The Scottish people had kept to their lochs and moors and glens, entranced by the meter and the cadence of their ancient oral culture, which now was finding a written voice in rhetoric and poetry and song. The hybrid Scottish monarchy was seduced by what it viewed to be its new place in the larger world, daring to dream that it had become part of the international elite. The Scottish people did not care much for the larger world, and they especially did not care much for elites.
    Having themselves been altered in their blood and traditions by intermarriage with Norman and English royalty, the high families of Scotland now embraced further schemes. In 1286 a quirk of history had made Margaret—at the age of three—the only direct heir to the throne of her grandfather, King Alexander III of Scotland, and thus she was in line to be the queen. Margaret was known in Scotland as the Maid of Norway since her late mother had married King Eric II of that country. Born in Norway, she had never even set foot in Scotland.
    “Proud” King Edward I, England’s ruthless and unusually powerful monarch, saw opportunity where others saw tragedy. In his eyes, Alexander’s death could quickly deliver him the prize of Scotland itself.
    The thirteenth century had begun a period of great change in Europe that over the next few centuries would cause the transition from the feudal system to the concept of the modern sovereign state. In sovereign terms,