[2] The years of his minority featured an embittered struggle for the control of affairs between two rival parties, the one led by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, the other by Alan Durward, Justiciar of Scotia.

But though disgraced, they still retained great influence, and two years later, seizing the person of the king, they compelled their rivals to consent to the erection of a regency representative of both parties.

[3] On attaining his majority at the age of 21 in 1262, Alexander declared his intention of resuming the projects on the Western Isles which the death of his father thirteen years before had cut short.

Alexander had married Margaret, daughter of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, on 26 December 1251, when he was ten years old and she was eleven.

"[6] Towards the end of Alexander's reign, the death of all three of his children within a few years made the question of the succession one of pressing importance.

[8] Alexander died in a fall from his horse while riding in the dark to visit the queen at Kinghorn in Fife on 19 March 1286 because it was her birthday the next day.

[10] On arriving in Inverkeithing, he insisted on not stopping for the night, despite the pleas of the nobles accompanying him and one of the burgesses of the town, Alexander Le Saucier.

When Yolande's pregnancy ended, probably with a miscarriage, Alexander's three-year-old granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway, became the heir.

[15] Raphael Holinshed, in his oft-fanciful history of England in his Chronicles, stated that at Alexander III's wedding to Yolande de Dreux, "a creature resembling death, naked of flesh & lire, with bare bones right dreadfull to behold" appeared at the end of a dance and caused it to be hurriedly concluded.

A similar account is given in Walter Bower's Scotichronicon, a figure that "seemed to glide like a ghost rather than walk on feet" supposedly appeared amidst a group performing Scottish sword dances.