But recently, some historians have suggested that perhaps it wasn’t a blunder at all—that Edward Bruce’s actions were actually directed by his brother. Historian and author Chris Brown posits that Bruce might have deliberately chosen Stirling as a target for Edward II, and then spread the news of his dismay with his brother as a means of propaganda to not alert the English (Bannockburn 1314: A New History, Chris Brown, Gloucestershire, England: The History Press, 2009; p. 216). Not only does the truce give Bruce a place to wait and prepare for the English army, which at this point Bruce already knows is marching, it also gives him the benefit of terrain of his choosing, and he doesn’t have to spread his men out.

When coupled with the gauntlet Bruce himself had thrown down the year before, threatening to forfeit the land of all the Scots fighting for Edward II if they did not submit to him within a year’s time (which he knew Edward II would have to respond to), and the fact that the Scots left the English unmolested on their march to Stirling—completely forgoing their usual guerrilla tactics—I think it’s a very sound theory and decided to go with it rather than the conventional wisdom of an Edward Bruce blunder.

After the execution of Edward II’s favorite, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, in 1312 by some of his barons, the king seems to have been in a period of mourning. Although he had a few favorites in between—Roger d’Amory, Hugh de Audley, and William de Montacute—I decided to bring forward the much more important (and better known) Sir Hugh Despenser the younger, whose “reign” as favorite probably didn’t happen until a few years later. He did fight at Bannockburn with the king, however, having been offered the big plum of the earldom of Moray—for which he reportedly brought along furniture, as I mentioned in the story.

I also pushed back Despenser’s marriage. At the time of The Ghost, he would have been married to Edward II’s niece, Eleanor de Clare. Eleanor was the sister of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, whom Edward II accuses of being cowardly and who was killed on the second day of Bannockburn without his surcoat.

Like Gaveston before him, the favoritism shown to Despenser by King Edward II, and Despenser’s own greed and quest for power, will earn him the enmity of the other barons. But Despenser’s influence will prove even more destructive to the king than Gaveston’s, eventually leading to Edward II’s forced abdication early in 1327 in favor of his son Edward III at the hand of Queen Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer.