Fourteen kings and almost two hundred years later, King Malcolm II the Destroyer was influenced by the Saxon method of succession in the male line of inheritance, but had no male issue. It is suspected that he conspired against the successors of his father, Kenneth II, who reigned from 971 - 995, to gain the throne. Malcolm the Destroyer won the Battle of Carham in 1018, whereby he gained Lothian from the Northumbrians. It happened that he reigned for twenty-nine years at the same time as King Canute and his successor was Shakespeare's venerable Duncan. Canute started to call himself Emperor of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Canute marched north with a great army awaited by Malcolm and the Scots on Scotland's most blessed barrier: Scotland's moat where the long Forth estuary might be bridged. Any invasion of Alba, Scotland north of Forth, had to cross at Stirling and where Malcolm's grandson, the young MacBeth appears on the scene when as Mormaor of Moray and Ross, had brought the strength of two provinces to his grandfather.
- Malcolm II and Finlath Aefgifu Sigurdsdottir (daugher of Sigurd the Mighty and granddaughter of Olaf the White) had two daughters: Bethoc and Donada. His three grandsons: by Bethoc the elder daughter had married Crinan of Atholl from Dunkeld. Dunkeld was the seat of the Culdees; a sect within the Celtic Church which started as a reforming group similar to the Benedictines and Franciscans in the Romish Church. Crinan of Atholl inherited the protection of the Columban faith and a dominant position amongst the Culdees.
- Bethoc and Crinan had son, Duncan. Duncan I MacCrinan was not the old king in Shakespeare's play, but neither was he a skilled warrior. In addition to killing King Kenneth III MacDuff, Malcolm II removed a few tanists (including the grandson of Boedhe), who were rivals to his own young grandson, Duncan I MacCrinan, son of his eldest daughter Bethoc. Both the Annals of Tigernach and the Annals of Ulster record Duncan's death in 1040 and identify Macbeth as the man who brought him down and succeeded him. It appears that Duncan was not much older than Macbeth, and Tigernach describes him as being 'slain by his subjects at an unripe age.' Macbeth had to deal with the thwarted ambitions of Crinan, Duncan's father; in Northumbria, Duncan's son Malcolm was sheltering with his maternal relatives, the powerful Siwards; and he had an uneasy truce with Thorfinn in the north. Crinan (the abbot of Dunkeld) was killed in a battle near Dunkeld, when Macbeth forcibly suppressed a revolt against his over-lordship in 1045.
- Donada married Earl Sigurd II Hlodvirsson of Orkney. The son would become the most famous Viking of all time: Thorfinn the Ravenfeeder. His grandfather Malcolm II made him Earl of Orkney and Caithness and the first earl in the Scottish polity, but a mormaer. His father Earl Sigurd was killed at the Battle of Clontarf. The Scottish crown is said to have lost nine earldoms (which extended into the heart of Scotland via an alliance and kinship with the Mormaers of Moray) to the Norseman, Thorfinn the Ravenfeeder, Earl of the Orkneys, during Duncan I MacCrinan's reign of six years.
- Donada married again to Findlaech MacRuari, Mormaer of Moray and Ross. Findlaech MacRuari was the most powerful noble in Scotland. They produced MacBeth. When Macbeth married Gruoch (Lady MacBeth), the widow of former Mormaer Gillacomgain MacRuari (the cousin of his father Findlaech MacRuari), his claim was further strengthened under the older alternating order of succession. An account of another Norse saga: "It happened one summer that Sigurd II Hlodvirsson of Orkeny was challenged to a pitched battle by Findlaec MacRuari, Earl of Moray, ..." the father of Macbeth. "Findlaec, in or about the yeare 995, was a dangerous enemy, and Sigurd II Hlodvirsson of Orkeny told his mother that if he accepted the challenge the odds against him would be seven to one. She gave him a raven-banner, finely embroidered, and Sigurd, in a black temper, gathered an army and went to battle at Skitten Mire in Caithness. Three men who carried his banner were killed, but Sigurd was victorious." According to the Ulster Annals and those of Tighernac (translated by O'Cosisser - v.ii. p.267), Malcolm II gave his daughter (Anleta or Donada) in marriage to Sigurd Hlodvirsson of the Bruces, Earl of Caithness, , after the victory over Findlaec MacRuari.
Gruoch (Lady MacBeth) and Gillecomgain MacRuari had a son Lulach. After his father Gillecomgain MacRuari's death, his son Lulach probably had had a greater claim to the throne than Duncan I MacCrinan through his mother, Gruoch (Lady MacBeth). Gruoch was the daughter of Boedhe (son of Keneth III MacDuff). Macbeth, son of Findlaech MacRuari, became Thane of Glamis in Ross and Cromarty and later Thane of Cawdor in Moray, and he succeeded to the title of Mormaer of Moray and Ross through his own right as tanist Sigurd II Hlodvirsson of Orkenyne.
- Malcolm II and Blanaid O' Brien (daughter of Brian Boru MacCennetig) had a daughter Anleta.