All Hail MacBeth

King Hereafter, by Dorothy Dunnett

King Hereafter is perhaps the best historical novel I have ever read. I first read it shortly after it was first published in 1982, and was quite enraptured by it. This is the third time I've read it, and it is still just as marvelous in my eyes.

First, forget Shakespeare's Macbeth - almost all the contemporary records that exist go against just about everything in the play, except for some of the names and places. There was never a Banquo, and MacBeth reigned over a large amount of what is now Scotland for 17 years, and is recalled in some texts as being a good and generous king.

But there were two men that we have solid, but incomplete genealogies and histories for, one Thorfinn Sigurdson, the Norse Earl of Orkney and Caithness, and one MacBeth mac Findláech, Mormaer of Moray, whose lives seem in some ways to parallel, in some ways to merge, and in some ways, to diverge. MacBeth was a king of Scots, or of Alba, that's recorded fact. Thorfinn is said in some Norse records to have conquered a vast portion of Scotland, the Hebrides, and parts of Ireland in addition to holding his own lands in Orkney and Caithness, and to have become King of the Scots. They are both given genealogies that contain some of the same people, or some people who could have been the same, or which are parallel, and which link them both to the royal family of Alba and specifically King Malcolm or Máel Coluim, the man who was the grandfather of the Duncan who was king before MacBeth. Many historians think that they were either cousins or possibly half-brothers through the maternal line, both grandsons of Malcolm. Some historians have concluded that MacBeth and Thorfinn were allies who essentially ruled, with each other's assistance, the entire north of the British Isles.

Dunnett proposes a theory about the descent and identity of MacBeth - one that goes perhaps beyond what the existing (albeit inconclusive and sometimes contradictory) sources can support, but one which makes great reading. After a great deal of historical research (which shows on every page of the novel), she has, by judiciously picking and chosing among the varied genealogies given for Thorfinn, his wife Ingeborg, MacBeth, and his wife Gruoch, and by making use of the ambiguity between father and step-father, merged the two men, and their stories, into one glorious life. And it could even be true.

According to Dunnett's theories, Malcolm's daughter, the quite historical and much-married Bethoc, is the mother of Duncan by her first husband Crinan, the mother of Thorfinn/Macbeth by her second husband Sigurd of Orkney, and was after the death of Sigurd, the wife of Findláech - making him Thorfinn/MacBeth's step-father. Dunnett argues that he is known by two names in history because, as Earl of Orkney, he rules a largely pagan people and holds his title from a pagan king, and thus in his actions as Earl of Orkney, he is known as Thorfinn, while, as Mormaer of Moray, he holds his lands from A Christian king and rules a Christian people, and thus uses his baptismal name of MacBeth, or "son of life" (and that his wife, Ingeborg/Gruoch, is known by two names for the same reason).

One can question the validity of this choice of Dunnett's - and many, many historians do - but as a work of fiction, the novel is splendid reading. Her proposition that Thorfinn and MacBeth are the same man and the subsequent merging of their separate deeds is the only major departure from the accepted historical record that I'm aware of, and the image she gives us of the politics, both secular and religious, of the time - the 50-odd years preceding the Norman conquest of England in 1066, to peg the time period to a relatively well-known event in the history of Western Europe - is detailed and well-delineated.

The character of Thorfinn, called MacBeth, is mesmerising. One follows him from a young boy of five already enmeshed in dynastic politics following the death of his father Sigurd, to a middle-aged man whose body has not the strength to win one last fight against one more foe. Along the way, we meet and come to love, as he does, the other great character of the novel, Ingeborg, called Gruoch, who he marries after killing her husband - his own step-father's killer - and who survives him to become the wife of Malcolm Canmore, the man who defeats and kills Macbeth.

Put together the magnificent characters, the skilful writing, the rich detail and the daring interpretation of history, and I think it's an irresistible read.