The first person to grasp the marketing potential of the unicorn seems to have been King James I of Scotland. Kidnapped by the English as an 11-year-old in 1406, he wasn’t released for eighteen years. When he assumed the throne, he placed a pair of rampant unicorns on his new coat of arms. The unicorn is still a symbol for Scotland, always depicted in chains – a nod to the years James spent as a hostage, perhaps, or else to the creature’s ferocity, only tamed in the presence of a virgin. But how did it become a byword for billion-dollar start-ups, a mascot for the LGBTQI+ community and the ne plus ultra for pre-teen girls the world over?
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