Robert the Bruce was the claimant to the throne of Scotland during the Wars of Independence. On his father's side, he was descended from Normans who had settled in Scotland, granted land by William the Conqueror, but on his mother's side he was the great-great-grandson of David of Huntingdon, whose grandfather was David I, once the king of Scotland, so the royal house went from being predominantly the Gaelic and Pictish fusion of House of Alpin to Norman kings. It has loosely been Norman families speaking French from Bruce onwards right through the Stuarts. Bruce was quite a warrior also, in the battle of Bannockburn they were outnumbered 2-1 to the English, and with cunning hedgehog formations managed to defeat the English. He also famously rode out and beheaded a challenger, alone, with his battle-axe, an English knight named Henry de Bohun.
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