Dynastic union

Norman or French culture first gained a foothold in Scotland during the Davidian Revolution, when King David I introduced Continental-style reforms throughout all aspects of Scottish life: social, religious, economic and administrative.

From the Wars of Scottish Independence, as common enemies of England and its ruling House of Plantagenet, Scotland and France started to enjoy a close diplomatic relationship, the Auld Alliance, from 1295 to 1560.

The prospect of dynastic union came in the 15th and 16th centuries, when Margaret, eldest daughter of James I of Scotland, married the future Louis XI of France.

For many years thereafter the country was ruled under a regency led by her French mother, Mary of Guise, who succeeded in marrying her daughter to the future Francis II of France.

Mary returned to a Scotland heaving with political revolt and religious revolution, which made a continuation of the alliance impossible.

Cordial economic and cultural relations did continue however, although throughout the 17th century, the Scottish establishment became increasingly Presbyterian, often belligerent to Catholicism, a facet which was somewhat at odds with Louis XIV's aggressively Catholic foreign and domestic policy.

At the end of the reign of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, he split his empire into a Spanish and Austrian line who remained closely allied and famously heavily intermarried.

The personal union between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover, jointly ruled by the head of the House of Hanover since 1707, ended with the death of William IV in 1837, and was replaced with a dynastic union: due to the different laws of succession, he was succeeded by two members of the dynasty, in the United Kingdom by his niece Victoria, the daughter of his late next brother Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and in Hanover by his second next brother Ernest Augustus.