JAMES V: THE INCOGNITO KING

James V’s short life was a kaleidoscope of pleasure and pain. His years were packed with personal trauma, passionate affairs and political feuds. Thrust onto the throne at just 17 months old, following the death of his father, King James IV, at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, he was placed in the care of a council of regents and soon became a pawn of rival pro-English and pro-French factions.

As a boy, James ricocheted around ambitious figures such as his mother, Margaret Tudor, sister of England’s King Henry VIII, and her new husband, the ambitious 6th Earl of Angus. Then there was the half-French Duke of Albany, who was charged with the governorship of Scotland until James was able to rule; not to mention numerous archbishops who either championed Catholicism or saw a future allied