List of Scottish monarchs
The Kingdom of the Picts just became known as Kingdom of Alba in Gaelic, which later became known in Scots and English as "Scotland"; the terms are retained in both languages to this day. By the late 11th century at the very latest, Scottish kings were using the term "rex Scottorum", or King of Scots, to refer to themselves in Latin. The Kingdom of Scotland was merged with the Kingdom of England to form a single Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Thus Queen Anne became the last monarch of the ancient kingdoms of Scotland and England and the first of Great Britain, although the kingdoms had shared a monarch since 1603 (see Union of the Crowns). Her uncle Charles II was the last monarch to be crowned in Scotland, at Scone in 1651. He had a second coronation in England ten years later.
History of Scottish Gaelic
Many historians mark the reign of King Malcolm Canmore (Malcolm III) as the beginning of Gaelic's decline in Scotland. In either 1068 or 1070, the king married the exiled Princess Margaret of Wessex. This future Saint Margaret of Scotland was a member of the royal House of Wessex, which had occupied the English throne from its founding until the Norman Conquest. Margaret was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon, and is often credited (or blamed) for taking the first significant steps in anglicising the Scottish court. She spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, and brought many English bishops, priests, and monastics to Scotland. Her family also served as a conduit for the entry of English nobles into Scotland. When both Malcolm and Margaret died just days apart in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicised sons and instead backed Malcolm's brother Donald as the next King of Scots. Known as Donald ("the Fair"), the new king had lived 17 years in Ireland as a young man, and his power base as an adult was in the thoroughly Gaelic west of Scotland. Upon Donald's accession to the throne, in the words of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", "the Scots drove out all the English who had been with King Malcolm". Malcolm's sons fled to the English court, but in 1097 returned with an Anglo-Norman army backing them. Donald was overthrown, blinded, and imprisoned for the remaining two years of his life. Because of the strong English ties of Malcolm's sons Edgar, Alexander, and David – each of whom became king in turn – Donald is sometimes called the "last Celtic King of Scotland". He was the last Scottish monarch to be buried on Iona, the one-time centre of the Scottish Gaelic Church and the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of and the Kingdom of Alba.