Chapter 2 studies Scottish responses to English claims, illustrating a shift in Scottish views of independence from parallel demonstrations of imperial sovereignty via historical narratives to more radical notions of consensual acknowledgment of equivalence. My discussion moves from political texts such as the Instructiones for Scottish lawyers at the papal curia, The Declaration of Arbroath, and John Ireland’s The Meroure of Wyssdome, to Andrew of Wyntoun’s Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, to two romances, John Barbour’s The Bruce and the anonymous Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain, and ends with John Mair’s Historia Maioris Britanniae. While some texts assert Scottish independence through existing sovereignty discourse, others, such as Gologras and Gawain, innovatively focus on mutual recognition freed from precedent. The fact that this obscure romance features one of the earliest recorded expressions of what we would call the modern doctrine of recognition reveals the benefits of comparative study across disciplines.