Macbeth, who had ruled Scotland for seventeen years after killing King Duncan I in battle, was finally defeated and slain by Malcolm, Duncan's son, at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. The real Macbeth was a relatively capable ruler, quite unlike the murderous tyrant of Shakespeare's imagination, and his death set Malcolm III on the path to the Scottish throne two years later.
The historical Macbeth bore little resemblance to Shakespeare's tortured, murderous king. He was Mormaer of Moray and became King of Alba in 1040 after killing Duncan I in battle near Elgin—a fairly normal method of succession in an era when Scottish kingship passed through violent contest rather than orderly inheritance. His seventeen-year reign was, by most accounts, stable and reasonably prosperous; he even made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, generous enough with his silver that a chronicler noted it 'scattered like seed.'
Malcolm, Duncan's son, spent years in exile in England gathering support, including from Earl Siward of Northumbria. He returned with an army and finally cornered Macbeth at Lumphanan, a small settlement in Aberdeenshire, where Macbeth was killed in battle.
Macbeth's stepson Lulach briefly succeeded him, but Malcolm hunted him down too, becoming Malcolm III in 1058. Centuries later, Shakespeare, drawing on Raphael Holinshed's embellished chronicles, transformed this workaday medieval power struggle into one of the great tragedies of the English language—cementing a wildly inaccurate but indelible image of Macbeth as a paranoid, blood-soaked usurper.
Key people: Macbeth of Scotland, Malcolm III of Scotland