The heroic story of Robert the Bruce and his passionate struggle for Scotland’s freedom THE STEPS TO THE EMPTY THRONE THE PATH OF THE HERO KING THE PRICE OF THE KING’S PEACE In a world of treachery and violence, Scotland’s most famous hero unites his people in a deadly fight for national survival. In 1296 Edward Plantagenet, King of England, was determined to bludgeon the freedom-loving Scots into submission. Despite internal clashes and his fierce love for his antagonist’s goddaughter, Robert the Bruce, both Norman lord and Celtic earl, took up the challenge of leading his people against the invaders from the South. After a desperate struggle, Bruce rose finally to face the English at the memorable battle of Bannockburn. But far from bringing peace, his mighty victory was to herald fourteen years of infighting, savagery, heroism and treachery before the English could be brought to sit at a peace-table and to acknowledge Bruce as a sovereign king. In this best selling trilogy, Nigel Tranter charts these turbulent years, revealing the flowering of Bruce’s character; how, tutored and encouraged by the heroic William Wallace, he determined to continue the fight for an independent Scotland, sustained by a passionate love for his land and devotion to his people. “Absorbing a notable achievement’ ― The Scotsman

This trilogy tells the story of Robert the Bruce and how, tutored and encouraged by the heroic William Wallace, he determined to continue the fight for an independent Scotland, sustained by a passionate love for his land. THE PATH OF THE HERO KING A harried fugitive, guilt-ridden, excommunicated, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots in name and nothing more, faced a future that all but he and perhaps Elizabeth de Burgh his wife accepted as devoid of hope; his kingdom occupied by a powerful and ruthless invader; his army defeated; a large proportion of his supporters dead or prisoners; much of his people against him; and the rest so cowed and war sick as no longer to care. Only a man of transcendent courage would have continued the struggle, or seen it as worth continuing. But Bruce, whatever his many failings, was courageous above all. And with a driving love of freedom that gave him no rest. Robert the Bruce blazes the path of the hero king, in blood and violence and determination, in cunning and ruthlessness, yet, strangely, a preoccupation with mercy and chivalry, all the way from the ill-starred open-boat landing on the Ayrshire coast by night, from a spider-hung Galloway cave and near despair, to Bannockburn itself, where he faced the hundred thousand strong mightiest army in the world, and won

This trilogy tells the story of Robert the Bruce and how, tutored and encouraged by the heroic William Wallace, he determined to continue the fight for an independent Scotland, sustained by a passionate love for his land. Bannockburn was far from the end, for Robert Bruce and Scotland. There remained fourteen years of struggle, savagery, heroism and treachery before the English could be brought to sit at a peace-table with their proclaimed rebels, and so to acknowledge Bruce as a sovereign king. In these years of stress and fulfilment, Bruce’s character burgeoned to its splendid flowering. The hero-king, moulded by sorrow, remorse and a grievous sickness, equally with triumph, became the foremost prince of Christendom despite continuing Papal excommunication. That the fighting now was done mainly deep in England, over the sea in Ireland, and in the hearts of men, was none the less taxing for a sick man with the seeds of grim fate in his body, and the sin of murder on his conscience. But Elizabeth de Burgh was at his side again, after the long years of imprisonment, and a great love sustained them both. Love, indeed, is the key to Robert the Bruce his passionate love for his land and people, for his friends, his forgiveness for his enemies, and the love he engendered in others; for surely never did a king arouse such love and devotion in those around him, in his lieutenants, as did he