AT first glance, Michael Stewart looks an unlikely man to lead Scotland to independence. For a start, he speaks with a distinctive, clipped French accent. A diminutive, bespectacled figure, dressed in a smart yellow shirt and trousers, he is polite and businesslike. Not everyone's idea of a Braveheart.

But Michael, or Prince Michael of Albany, as he prefers to be known, clearly feels just as passionately about the land of his forebears as the warrior knight William Wallace, portrayed in the recent Hollywood film. And, like Wallace, he is determined to free Scotland from English rule.

Born in exile in Brussels 43 years ago, a descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Prince Michael claims he is head of Scotland's Royal House of Stewart. He returned to the land he calls home 25 years ago to reclaim his inheritance but ended up working in the unlikely setting of a tartan gift shop in Edinburgh.

The maverick prince with a long-term game-plan later endured two years of impoverished unemployment before publishing a best-selling book on his Scottish ancestry. Focused and determined, he now confidently predicts that in 2007 he will be the King of Scotland.

But as we speak, the Prince, staying with friends in North Yorkshire, has more immediate battles on his mind. Not everyone, it appears, accepts his credentials at face value.

Although he was granted British citizenship in February 2001, he has now been refused a passport.

There is talk of conspiracy and maladministration. The Prince believes he upset the previous Tory government because of his perceived threat to the union of Scotland and England. But a letter from the Passport Agency says it is investigating "discrepancies" in his records, mainly over the fact he held a British Visitors Passport when not entitled to do so. The matter is in the hands of the Prince's solicitors. "I am so angry. It is an infringement of my civil rights," he says.

Ironically, the passportless Prince Michael insists he has a stronger claim to the crown than his distant cousin, the Queen: "There are 1,500 people worldwide with a better claim to the crown of Britain and Scotland than the Queen. I have the best claim of all."

But the Prince, the Queen may be relieved to hear, does not intend to challenge her rule entirely. His family renounced its rights to English rule many years ago. His only interest now is Scotland.

The Prince takes his lineage from his mother, Her Royal Highness Renee Julienne Stewart, who worked for Unilever in Belgium. His father, Baron Gustave Lafosse de Chatry owned a chain of hi-fi shops.

An only child, Michael was brought up in a castle and educated by private tutors until he was ten, when his father went bankrupt and he was sent to state school. After three months, he stamped his princely foot and insisted his parents send him to boarding school: "I couldn't stand it. I don't know how they did it and I don't care," he says. "I just had to get away from those screaming kids."

He has displayed the same dogged determination to get what he wants ever since. From the age of five, he told his family that, one day, he would go to Scotland: "to live and die there."

And so at 18 he left his job at a stockbrokers in Brussels for Edinburgh. "I am a throwback to the pre-British Stewarts. It was a Stewart who took away Scottish sovereignty and I feel a Stewart has to give it back. A wrong has to be righted."

Settled in Edinburgh, he worked in the Tartan Gift Shop for 11 years, while researching his book on the Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland.

His life followed a very different path to that of his princely cousins, 13 times removed, in the house of Windsor: "Being unemployed was very difficult. Yes, I did get depressed and despondent. I have experienced life possibly like none of the Windsors ever have."

Thankfully, his book, published in 1998, was a best-seller and now gives him an income of about £26,000 a year.

Prince Michael's aim now is to declare Scotland an independent kingdom, with its own written constitution. "Westminster still rules Scotland. There is no real democracy. I want to take Scotland forward in the 21st Century."

He claims he has the support of the Scottish people he meets on lecture tours all over the country. "People say it is great to hear someone so keen on Scotland. It is almost like being possessed."

A Scottish Nationalist Party supporter, he feels he has an important role to play internationally, pointing out there are 42m people with Scottish roots worldwide. The Queen, he feels, represents only southern England, "Scotland is the seventh richest country in the world. Somebody needs to promote Scotland's business interests."

The Prince considers the Royal Family outdated and does not envy their lifestyle, especially the Press scrutiny: "Private lives should remain private."

He lives alone and jokes that he is celibate. "I like to say I celibate of this, celibate of that," he laughs, sounding, for a moment, more like a character from a Carry-On film than a future King. "No, really, I am a bachelor."

Like his distant cousin Charles, he is passionate about gardening. But, unlike Charles, he shares a small garden with other tenants next to his one-bedroom mews flat in Edinburgh. He cooks, cleans and does his own ironing: "I don't have a butler to tell me breakfast is served. I am like everybody else."

One day, though, he is convinced he will leave his little mews to take up residence in Holyrood Palace.

But a Scottish king with a French accent doesn't sound quite right, I tell him. "I am perfectly happy with who I am. I don't need to redefine myself," he says.

However, Prince Michael proves he can carry off a convincing Scottish accent when he recounts a story about arriving in Scotland and being asked by a hotel owner (he now sounds just like the housekeeper in Dr Finlay's Casebook): "Will you have an egg with your tea?"

The Prince goes on to explain he thought it a strange custom, putting a boiled egg in a cup of tea. His response, at just 18, was astoundingly self-assured: "I thought, if it's good enough for my people, it's good enough for me."

The hotel owner went on to tell the young Michael there was only one room for him, leading him to a bedroom containing a huge portrait of Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary Queen of Scots.

"He looked just like me. It was really spooky." From that day, he says, everything fell into place. "It is my destiny."

Published: Saturday, May 19, 2001