Most sources name Seton’s wife as a daughter of Francis Cheyne, but a reference in a genealogical chart said that she was the daughter of Isabel, the daughter of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and Isabella MacDuff, which gave me the idea for the connection and my fictional Joan. Readers of The Viper will recall that most sources say that Isabella MacDuff and John Comyn did not have any children.

Alice and Margaret Comyn, Buchan’s nieces, were his co-heiresses. The fight over the Buchan lands in Scotland would eventually lead to what is known as the Second Scottish War of Independence from 1332 to 1357. Margaret Comyn was a ward of her brother-in-law de Beaumont when she was married sometime around 1315 to John Ross—a loyal Scot. As a result, she lost her claim to the Buchan lands in England. It seemed strange to me that she would be allowed to marry a Scot. Although it gave de Beaumont the English lands of Buchan outright, it gave her an easier claim to the Scottish lands, which he also craved. But it did give me the idea for her part of the story.

I hope the members of the Seton family/clan will forgive me for adding a wyvern to their arms, but early on I needed a good war name and, well, I liked Dragon.

The attempt by Edward Bruce to take Carlisle Castle that Alex foils in chapter 2 happened the week after Easter 1314—around the sixteenth of April. Edward Bruce was sent to Cumbria by his brother to harry (possibly for nonpayment of tribute) and gather supplies for the army. While doing so, he makes something of a haphazard attempt on the castle.

Historians don’t agree on the exact dates for Edward Bruce’s siege of Stirling Castle, but the April raid in Cumbria could have been either after he makes his agreement with Sir Phillip Moubray (the former Scot patriot now holding Stirling Castle for Edward II) or during—possibly to relieve the boredom of the siege.

Conventional wisdom has viewed Edward Bruce’s truce with Sir Phillip Moubray, whereby the Scots would lift the siege on Stirling with Moubray agreeing to hand over the castle to Bruce if he was not relieved by St. John’s Day, as a major tactical blunder on the part of the king’s brother. The eager-for-battle, aggressive, hotheaded, and impatient Edward Bruce (who is said to have hated sieges) essentially throws down the gauntlet to the English, forcing the very thing his brother had been trying to avoid for eight years.