We Douglases can trace our ancestry back to the Emperor Charlemagne and the Sir James Douglas who carried King Robert the Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land. We honour his memory with a crowned heart in our coat of arms. They say we are a violent clan, but we’re a proud one too, even if few of my ancestors died in their beds. My father was no different, and he had charm and audacity in equal portions. My parents’ marriage excited the jealousy of the Scottish nobles. They suspected Father – and with good reason – of planning to usurp the regency and rule Scotland. The country was divided and, as civil war broke out, my mother was ousted from office and locked up. Fearful for her life, she escaped into England and the protection of her brother, my uncle, King Henry VIII; she was so far gone in pregnancy that it’s a wonder I wasn’t born in the saddle.

Apparently, I wasn’t expected to live, but thrive I did. ‘You were a fair young lady,’ Mother was fond of saying. As soon as I was old enough to understand about kings and queens and kingdoms, she never ceased reminding me that I was third in line to the English throne, King Henry having but the one daughter, Mary, and my mother herself being his next heir.

King Henry was very angry that Mother had been driven from Scotland and invited her south to London. But Father refused to go with her. He wanted to make peace with the lords and get his lands back, for they had been seized in the fighting.

‘He never even took leave of me,’ Mother recalled. ‘He just rode away. You may imagine how aggrieved I felt – I, who had loved him!’

Of course, I was far too young to be aware at the time of the clouds that would overshadow my childhood. I do not remember our sojourn in England, although we were there for about a year and King Henry and Queen Katherine apparently made much of me. Mother had summoned her old nurse to look after me, which left her free to plan her triumphant return to Scotland as regent.

I was not two years old when I stepped on Scottish soil for the first time, near Berwick. Father was waiting to greet us, but it was clear, Mother recalled later, that he was there under sufferance. Nonetheless, they were reconciled. But, on arrival in Edinburgh, it was made clear to my mother that she would not be allowed a share in the government or access to the young King James.

For years, she fought to regain power and custody of her son, but in vain. Even Uncle Henry let her down, signing a truce with the Scots lords without insisting on redress for the wrongs she had suffered. There was no money, for the lords withheld her revenues.