A king's desperate gamble
On 1 November 1285 — though traditionally associated with 25 August 1278 for the wedding itself — Alexander III married Yolande of Dreux at Jedburgh Abbey in a ceremony that was both joyous and heavy with foreboding. The king was forty-four years old. His first wife, Margaret of England, had died in 1275. Far more devastating, all three of his children had predeceased him — his sons Alexander and David, and his daughter Margaret, whose own infant daughter (the Maid of Norway) was now the only direct heir to the Scottish throne.
The marriage to Yolande was an act of dynastic desperation. Scotland's golden age under Alexander III — decades of peace, prosperity, and stability — rested on the terrifyingly fragile foundation of a single life. If Alexander died without a male heir, Scotland would face a succession crisis that could tear the kingdom apart. Yolande, a French noblewoman of proven noble lineage, represented Alexander's last chance to secure the future.
The wedding at Jedburgh was lavish, but an unsettling incident cast a shadow over the celebrations. During the festivities, a masque was performed in which a skeletal figure — widely interpreted as Death — appeared among the dancers. The court fell silent. Whether this story was embellished in hindsight, it became one of the most famous omens in Scottish history.
Alexander's gamble ended in tragedy on the stormy night of 19 March 1286. Desperate to reach Yolande at Kinghorn in Fife, the king rode from Edinburgh through a violent tempest. His courtiers begged him to wait until morning, but Alexander insisted. Somewhere on the coastal path above the Forth, his horse stumbled on the cliffs. The king was found dead on the beach the following morning, his neck broken. Yolande may have been pregnant at the time of his death, but if so, the child was never born. Scotland was left without a clear heir, and the succession crisis that Alexander had feared above all else engulfed the kingdom. Edward I of England exploited the chaos, and the Wars of Independence followed — thirty years of conflict that shaped Scotland for centuries to come.