Introduction
The kingship of the Scots, as a component of the modern British crown, is one of the oldest monarchies in the world. Its origins can be traced with a fair degree of confidence to the early sixh century AD and the kingshiip of the migrant Scots of Dál Riata in Ulster, who established a kingdom, also named Dál Riata, in the peninsulas and islands of the south-western Highlnads of the country we know as Scotland.

Part One
The Early Kings in Scotland c.AD 84-1058

I
The Earliest Kings c.AD 84-600

The kingship of the Scots was one of the most ancient monarchies in the British Isles even in the Middle Ages but it was a comparative newcomer in the ranks of rulers who emerge from the darkness of prehistory in the early centuries AD. The first chiefs or kings who appear are little more than names in the histories and records of the Roman campaigns in northern Britain in the late first century AD. They were the rulers of Celtic tribes whose territories lay in the path of the advancing legions. Of course, these were not kings as we would understand them today, rulers of well-ordered states whose governments were run by ministers and bureaucrats supported by a fiscal system, dispensers of justice and formulators of law for the good of their subjects generally. Early kingship was something quite different. It was in the first place, much simpler.