Robert the Bruce spent his life at war and never got the crusade he had vowed to join. Dying in 1329, he asked that his heart be cut out and carried to the Holy Land in his place. His closest companion, Sir James Douglas — the Good Sir James, the "Black Douglas" — took the embalmed heart in a silver casket, hung it about his neck, and sailed south. He got as far as Spain, where he joined the Christian war against the Moors of Granada, and there, at the Battle of Teba in August 1330, he was surrounded and killed. His men recovered the king's heart and bore it home to Melrose Abbey. Ever after, the House of Douglas wore a crowned red heart in its arms. This figure rides in that heraldry — white and blue livery strewn with the silver stars of Douglas and the red hearts of the king's last wish, sword high, on a matching caparisoned horse. (The much-loved image of Douglas hurling the casket ahead of him with a cry of "lead on, brave heart" is a later flourish, a sixteenth-century embellishment made famous by Walter Scott, rather than sober history.) King & Country title the piece Sir Archibald Douglas, a later lord of the same house and arms; the knight who actually bore Bruce's heart was his kinsman Sir James. Ride him with Robert the Bruce, whose heart he carried, and Sir William Wallace for a Wars-of-Independence group — while his own road, toward Jerusalem, is the one Richard the Lionheart had ridden a century and a half before. In a diorama he sets out on the strangest crusade of all: to carry a dead king's heart to the Holy Land. Model: MK195 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set
