The kingship was then seized by Haraldr Guðrøðarson, Rǫgnvaldr Óláfsson's first cousin once removed, suggesting that the killers and the new king had colluded together.

The assassination, therefore, appears to have been a continuation of the vicious family feud that had engulfed the Crovan dynasty since the late twelfth century, when Rǫgnvaldr Óláfsson's father and Haraldr Guðrøðarson's grandfather first contested the kingship of the Isles.

[15] Specifically, the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century Chronicle of Mann states that, when Óláfr died in 1237, he was succeeded by his fourteen-year-old son, Haraldr Óláfsson.

[17] The Norse-Gaelic Crovan dynasty, founded by Rǫgnvaldr Óláfsson's paternal great-great grandfather, held royal power in the Isles from the late eleventh to the mid thirteenth century.

By the turn of the first quarter of the century, Óláfr managed to put aside the wife that Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson had assigned him; and afterwards married Cairistíona, thereby gaining her father's military assistance.

As time wore on, Óláfr gained the upper-hand in the struggle, and at one point had Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson's son, Guðrøðr Dond, blinded and castrated.

[26] The source itself survives in the form of a fourteenth-century Latin manuscript,[27] which is in turn a copy of a chronicle probably first commissioned and composed during the reign of Magnús Óláfsson, King of Mann and the Isles.

[30] Having succeeded his father, the chronicle reveals that Haraldr Óláfsson was soon ousted from power by representatives of Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway.

After unsuccessfully repulsing these men, Haraldr Óláfsson voyaged to Norway, where he stayed for about three years, and thus reconciled himself with Hákon, who in turn reinstalled him as king in the Isles.

[33] In 1247, the thirteenth-century Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar states that Haraldr Óláfsson again journeyed to Norway, where he married Hákon's daughter, Cecilía, in the winter of 1247/1248.

[53] In fact, the killing is the last recorded example of regicide in the Norse-Gaelic realm, and may partly evidence the Europeanisation of the peripheral regions of the British Isles during the twelfth- and thirteenth centuries.

[54] As it turned out, the reign of Rǫgnvaldr Óláfsson's successor was short-lived, since Haraldr Guðrøðarson was recalled to Norway in 1250, for having unjustly seized the kingship.