Robert Bruce is an icon of Scottish nationalism, the man who led the kingdom to victory in the first War of Independence. A detail well known to scholars, which seldom penetrates far into public discourse, is that Robert began the war fighting for the English king. Through the fortunes of war and immense personal political savvy, Robert Bruce would reinvent himself, from an English collaborator and leader of a spurned faction on the fringes of Scottish politics, into the great hope of Scottish independence.  Such a radical reversal of positions was not the result of a simple or swift process, instead it occurred by a matter of degrees over more than a decade of warfare.

In March of 1296, King John Balliol of Scotland, his resolve stiffened by a cabal of prominent Scottish nobles, invaded the north of England. The war was the almost inevitable consequence of Edward I of England’s heavy-handed attempts to exert his status as the overlord of Scotland. He had been the controlling mind behind the council that had appointed John king of Scotland in 1292, and he had made all candidates, as a prerequisite for their participation in the process, agree to recognise his overlordship of Scotland.

Edward, in dire need of reinforcements for his wars in France, attempted to coerce the Scottish king and nobility into performing military service for him. When they refused, Edward declared their extensive lands in England forfeit, precipitating the war. Balliol’s refutation of the English king’s position was backed by a healthy majority of the Scottish aristocracy. Seven of the Scottish earls joined him in his invasion of England while three, including the Bruce, rallied to Edward I. The Scottish army reached the town of Carlise, only to find Edward had placed Robert in charge of its defences. Unable to take the heavily defended town and with English reinforcements on the way, John’s army retreated back to Scotland where they were decisively defeated at the Battle of Dunbar. John Balliol was captured shortly afterwards, imprisoned within England and forced to abdicate, leaving Scotland without a king.

This blow, while grievous, did not end hostilities. The following year saw widespread uprisings against Edward and the proxy government he had installed within Scotland. This ignited a strangely tidal cycle of warfare in which the Scottish nobility would attack Edward’s lieutenants within Scotland, only to come to terms when the English king intervened in force. Over the course of this conflict, Robert Bruce changed sides several times in search of advantage, before his final break with Edward in 1306.

So why did the future king of Scotland and victor of Bannockburn begin the war he would eventually win, fighting for the enemy? John Balliol’s great rival for the Scottish throne and opponent at the council overseen by Edward I was Robert’s grandfather, Robert Bruce the Competitor. Even before Edward’s involvement, the Bruce family had entered into armed rebellion to contest the succession of Alexander III’s granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway. The Bruces had also built a powerful coalition of their own, by recruiting the regional rivals of the dominant Balliol faction. They, like the Balliols, were Anglo-Scottish in origin and had considerable lands in England, which would have been lost had they openly sided against Edward I. First and foremost, the Bruces threw their lot in with Edward and the English in the hopes that with the Balliols now in open revolt, Edward would grant the Scottish throne to them.

Robert’s first break with Edward came when the king attempted to use Bruce to quash rebellious members of his own party, something which would have dramatically curtailed his support within Scotland. His final refutation of Edward and embracing of the cause of independence only occurred when it became clear that Edward had no intention of appointing a new Scottish king.

Robert Bruce was not a champion of Scottish nationalism because the concept was almost entirely alien to members of the late thirteenth century aristocracy. Robert lived in a world where power and identity were governed by personal rather institutional relationships. His primary objective throughout this period was to win the Scottish throne for his family. His initial support for Edward I suggests that he would have been willing to accept English vassalage in order to achieve this ambition. The First War of Scottish Independence and the struggle to reject English overlordship masked an equally fierce and overlapping war waged between different factions of the Scottish nobility.

James Turner is the author of The Scottish Rebellion Against Robert the Bruce: Exiles and Traitors.