The worst of kings, by his own admission
Robert III was crowned King of Scots at Scone on 14 August 1390, and by his own account he was the most miserable occupant the Scottish throne had ever known. When asked what epitaph he wanted on his tomb, he reportedly replied: "Here lies the worst of kings and the most wretched of men in the whole realm." It was a devastatingly honest self-assessment from a monarch crippled both physically and politically.
Robert had been christened John, but changed his name to Robert on his accession — the name John having been tainted by John Balliol, the puppet king who had submitted to Edward I. Robert III's real problem, however, was not his name but his body. He had been kicked by a horse years before his coronation, leaving him partially disabled and unable to ride or fight. In medieval Scotland, where a king was expected to lead his army in person, this was a crippling disadvantage.
Power in Scotland was effectively exercised by Robert's younger brother, the Duke of Albany — a ruthless politician who made no secret of his ambition to control the kingdom. When Robert's eldest son David, Duke of Rothesay, was starved to death in Albany's custody at Falkland Palace in 1402 — officially he died of "divine providence" but no one believed it — the king was powerless to act. Robert feared for his surviving son James and tried to send him to France for safety.
The attempt to save Prince James ended in disaster. The boy was captured at sea by English pirates in 1406 and handed over to Henry IV of England. When Robert III heard the news, he reportedly died of grief at Rothesay Castle on Bute. James remained an English prisoner for eighteen years. Robert III's reign is a study in the helplessness of a well-meaning king without the physical or political power to protect his own family. His self-described epitaph was crueller than he deserved — he was not a bad king so much as an unlucky one, trapped in a body and a political situation that defeated him.