FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, the key reference point for twenty-first-century Scottish constitutional medievalism of a separatist bent has been the debate on independence from the UK, and particularly the Scottish Independence Referendum that took place on 18 September 2014 and ended in defeat for the separatists. After the reasonably close result (55.3 against 44.7 per cent) on a very high turnout (84.6 per cent), the constitutional future of Scotland, inside or outside the Union, remains uncertain. This uncertainty has been compounded by the narrow British vote in 2016 to leave the EU, which saw a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland vote to remain. Soon after the European referendum, the clear Scottish ‘Remain’ vote caused the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, to think aloud about a second ‘indyref ’ and the EU membership of an independent Scotland. At the time of writing, Sturgeon appears to have settled into a long game of trying to get Westminster to approve a second Scottish independence referendum.

For many, the country’s constitutional future is tightly bound up with the matter of Scottish national identity. The search for national identity has intensified in Scottish cultural discourse since the 1980s. Notably in the Scottish literary sphere, the question of Scottishness in the twenty-first century has been addressed with urgency, vigour and, often enough, playfulness. This engagement has not shied away from taking a political stance, with a clear majority of commenters supporting independence. The political interventions of cultural actors on the topic of Scottish independence have also been significantly more likely to turn to medievalism than have been those of their politician counterparts. Because even though the SNP leadership did refer to the Wars of Scottish Independence and particularly the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath during the referendum campaign, theirs was relatively lowkey engagement with the medieval past.