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Hello. I'm going to be talking about heredity here which is quite a complicated subject so if you need to stop and say, "What was that again?" do feel free to go back and re-read it!OK, let's begin by taking our time machine right back to 1016. The King of England is Edmund Ironside. He has come down from a long line of Kings of Wessex. They eventually swallowed up most of their rival Anglo-Saxon-speaking kingdoms and became the undisputed Kings of England, which is what King Edmund is now. However there is an invasion this year and Edmund loses to a Viking called Knut. Knut takes over half the country and gifts the other half of Edmund's own country to him. Whichever of the two survives will take over the whole lot. Curiously Edmund only lasts a short while before suddenly dying - Knut becomes King of England by conquest, not by inheritance.Let's leave 1016 and travel forwards.Edward the Exile, son of King Edmund Ironside, took on his father's mantle as the rightful King of England, once again a King without a throne. He never reigned: in his place the English were ruled by Knut, Harold I, Harthiknut and Edward the Confessor (first part of the reign). Edward the Exile died in 1057.Edward the Exile had a son called Edgar the Aetheling, who inherited the would-be King job but had no children and so bequeathed it to his sister, St. Margaret, on his death in about the year 1126. His would-be reign covers the actual reigns of Edward the Confessor (last part of the reign), Harold II, William I, William II and Henry I (first part of the reign).St. Margaret, then, became the rightful Queen without a throne. She married Malcolm III, King of Scots.One of their children, King David I, reigned over Scotland (but not England) from 1124-1153. He was not only King of Scots but, as St. Margaret's son, the rightful King of England.PLEASE NOTE HIS NAME WELL - WE SHALL COME BACK TO HIM.There then proceeded a whole series of Kings and Queens of Scots which finished with the untimely death of the 7-year-old Margaret, Maid of Norway (and Queen of Scots, of course) in 1290. Each one was, of course, the true King of England.Now here we have a problem. Because the poor girl's death ended a whole line it then caused an argument amongst the Scots about who the next King should be as you had to go so far back through old Scottish monarchs to find a point in the line from which you could diverge from history and move forwards again to reach 1290 and the rightful successor, particularly

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