Born in Scotland, lost his head in England
Charles I was born at Dunfermline Palace on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. He was a sickly child who could barely walk or speak until the age of four. No one expected him to become king — his older brother Henry, Prince of Wales, was the golden boy of the Stuart dynasty. But Henry died of typhoid fever in 1612, and the awkward, stammering younger brother suddenly became heir to two thrones.
Dunfermline Palace, where Charles was born, had been a royal residence since the 11th century. Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret had held court there, and Robert the Bruce was buried in the adjacent abbey. The palace was one of the grandest in Scotland, and its ruins still stand beside Dunfermline Abbey. Charles left Scotland as an infant when his father rode south to claim the English throne in 1603, and he did not return until 1633, when he came north for his Scottish coronation.
Charles's relationship with Scotland was disastrous. His attempt to impose an Anglican prayer book on the Scottish Kirk in 1637 provoked riots and the National Covenant. His insistence on religious uniformity and his belief in the divine right of kings put him on a collision course with Scottish Presbyterianism. The Bishops' Wars that followed were the opening act of the wider British Civil Wars that would consume England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The trajectory from Dunfermline to the scaffold at Whitehall on 30 January 1649 is one of the most dramatic in royal history. A king born in Scotland's ancient capital, raised in England, and eventually beheaded by his own subjects. His execution horrified Scotland — whatever their quarrels with Charles, the Scots considered regicide an abomination. They immediately proclaimed his son Charles II and went to war with Cromwell to defend the Stuart succession. The consequences — defeat at Dunbar and Worcester, English occupation, and years of suffering — all flowed from the stubborn convictions of the sickly boy born at Dunfermline.