different reasons: while Robert Stewart managed to gain a grip on ultimate power in Scotland by devious or violent means during the reign of three different Scottish kings, Alexander Stewart simply abused his power on a systematic but more regional scale, maintaining a rule of terror across much of the Highlands by imprisoning and murdering those who offended him and pillaging the countryside. His behaviour led to him being censured by the King's Council in 1388, and to his being known to history as the Wolf of Badenoch, though he has also been called the Celtic Atilla.

Alexander was made Lord of Badenoch and granted large estates in the Highlands by his father Robert II on 30 March 1371. In 1382 he was made 1st Earl of Buchan (therehad been earlier Earls of Buchan, but he was the 1st Earl of the title's second creation), and he also served as Justiciar, or the Crown's Chief Law Officer, in northern Scotland: in effect he exercised the full authority of the Scottish Crown throughout the Highlands. The Wolf of Badenoch had a number of lairs. The most notable was Lochindorb Castle on an island in Lochindorb, north of Grantown-on-Spey, but he was also associated with Drumin Castle near Glenlivet, Castle Garth near Glen Lyon, and Ruthven Castle near Kingussie, a site occupied since the early 1700s by Ruthven Barracks.

Alexander added considerably to his landholdings by marrying Eupheme de Ross, Countess of Ross in July 1382. They had no children: a fact that Alexander blamed on his wife (and,