Alexander Óg (Scottish Gaelic: Alasdair Òg, or Alasdair Òg mac Domhnaill, Anglicized: Alexander the Younger), Lord of Islay (b.c. 1260 - 1308), was a Hebridean magnate active at the end of the 13th- and beginning of the 14th centuries. He was elder son of Aonghas Mór, Lord of Islay and Kintyre, and succeeded to his father's titles upon his father's death in c.1295.
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As a child, Alasdair was in 1264 a hostage in the court of King Alexander III of Scotland, because his father Angus had just turncoated himself from Norwegian alliance to Scottish.[1]
In 1268, Angus Mor and Alasdair his eldest son, entered into an alliance known as the Turnberry Band, to support a campaign in Ireland and which later formed the basis that banded the group around the claim of the Bruce family to the Scottish throne.
Alasdair added considerably to his power and influence by marriage with Juliana mac Doughall of Lorne, one of the daughters of Alexander of Argyll, ruler of Lorne and chief of MacDougalls, presumably by his Comyn wife.
Juliana's father and brother, lords of Latharna and Lorne, had allied themselves to the pro-Baliol and sometimes even pro-English faction, signaled by marriage of Alasdair's father-in-law Alasdair with Red Comyn's sister - that marriage produced Iain of Latharna.
After his father's death, Alasdair however was closely tied to the MacDougalls, and joined with them in their support of the English. He was appointed Admiral of the Western Seas, in around 1300.
Alasdair was already long-time ruler when the Red Comyn was murdered in 1306 by Robert the Bruce, leader of the Scottish independence faction, who proclaimed himself as king Robert I. Alignments passed in a way that Alasdair with his wife's family were in opposition against The Bruce, and that brought him and the lordship of Islay into serious trouble.
After the Bruce had finally defeated Alasdair's brother-in-law John of Argyll, one of Bruce's worst enemies, at the Battle of the Pass of Brander near the Bridge of Awe, and captured Alexander of Argyll (the father-in-law) in the stronghold of Dunstaffnage Castle, he turned his attention to crushing Alasdair of Islay.
For this purpose the Scottish king had his galley drawn, like that of Magnus Barefoot before him, across the isthmus at Tarbert, and besieged the Islay Lord in Castle Sween, his usual residence. Alasdair was forced to surrender, and was forthwith imprisoned in Dundonald Castle in Ayrshire, where he died in 1308.[2] At the same time his possessions and lordship of the Islay were forfeited and given to his younger brother Aonghas Óg, whose support had been of so much value to the Bruce, and who figures as the hero of Sir Walter Scott’s famous poem.
Alexander Macdonald and Juliana Macdougall had: