Qualla: Battle of Pitgaveny https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Pitgaveny https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny Battle of Pitgaveny: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny/ Photo credit Ann Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Shakespeare set it in a castle, in the dead of night, with a knife in the dark. The real death of King Duncan happened almost six hundred years before the play was written, on open ground near a place called Bothnagowan - modern Pitgaveny, just outside Elgin - on a summer's day in 1040. There was no whispered scheming, no spotless king. There was an army from the south, an army from Moray, and a battle that Duncan lost.

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Image: Ann Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/gfm8-battle-of-pitgaveny-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Pitgaveny: Two Kings, One Crown https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny/ Photo credit Ann Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Duncan I had inherited the Scottish throne in 1034 through his mother, a sideways move that bypassed the older male line descending from Kenneth MacAlpin. Many nobles thought the crown should have gone elsewhere - perhaps to Macbeth, the dux of Moray, a powerful war-leader whose ...

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Image: Ann Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/gfm8-battle-of-pitgaveny-two-kings-one-crown.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Pitgaveny: A King's Bad Decade https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny/ Photo credit Ann Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Duncan's reign went badly almost from the start. He tried to reclaim Caithness and Sutherland from Thorfinn the Mighty, the Viking Earl of Orkney, and was beaten. In 1038 he invaded Northumbria in retaliation for English raids on Cumberland and was beaten again, this time at the ...

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Image: Ann Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/gfm8-battle-of-pitgaveny-a-kings-bad-decade.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Pitgaveny: Pitgaveny, 14 August 1040 https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny/ Photo credit Ann Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. He found one. The chronicles are sparse - this is the eleventh century, and surviving accounts give us a date, a name, and a result. On 14 August Duncan met Macbeth's forces at Bothnagowan, near Elgin. The fighting went against him. Some sources say Duncan was killed outright on ...

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Image: Ann Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/gfm8-battle-of-pitgaveny-pitgaveny-14-august-1040.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Pitgaveny: The Long Aftermath https://qualla.com/battle-of-pitgaveny/ Photo credit Ann Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. History after Pitgaveny became the rough material from which Shakespeare would carve his tragedy. Duncan's sons fled - Malcolm Canmore to England, Donald Ban into the islands. In 1045 Macbeth killed Duncan's father Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld, in battle. He held the throne through i...

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Image: Ann Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/m/8/battle-of-pitgaveny-wp/gfm8-battle-of-pitgaveny-the-long-aftermath.mp3 0:06 5 full