Victorian non-fiction about Rob Roy, with about five hundred years of backstory, up to the deaths of his sons, I think mostly written to clarify what Water Scott had made up. I came into this with a general outline of Scottish politics, and having seen the Liam Neeson movie so long ago that I remember nothing about it (other than that it was bad), so this was helpful in terms of giving me a general context, though not all the way to very helpful. Late Victorian history writing can be a lot of fun, but this tended more towards stuffy and repetitive. I found it hard to get much context as to why which clan was killing which other clan now (usually someone had stolen a cow), or who any of the characters were.

It picked up a little bit when we got to actual Rob Roy, but I couldn't say from the end of it that I actually had a strong picture of what made him tick. I think the author was trying to nod to the Scott thing of highlighting a romantic past while justifying the English eradicating the culture that allowed it, which... meh.

I felt like this was a case where either primary documents or a modern cited biography would be an improvement.