Well, this is very entertaining! While The Princess Bride is at its core a rollicking fairy tale that does nothing at all to challenge racial or sexual stereotypes, what saves it is the witty and occasionally self-mocking tone of the text, the framing narrative of an author reclaiming a story he loved in childhood for his grandson, and also the sub-plot about the process of editing down and publishing a story written by another person in another time for another audience. I’m also impressed by the ambiguity of the ending (I understand that the film doesn’t dare to replicate that). So, despite its flaws, some of which are acknowledged in the text, strongly recommended.
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Johnston is mistaken on the peerage question – technically and practically the pre-1707 Scottish peerage remain a distinct body, with their own place in the table of precedence and their own regulations for determining succession to titles, involving the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh where peers of England, Great Britain and the UK would refer to the College of Arms in London. The Lord Lyon is also consulted by new peers resident in Scotland or of Scottish origin on peerage titles, I believe.
The question of the Irish peerage was still preoccupying lawyers as late as the 1990s, when Sir Nicholas Lyall as attorney-general had to rule on whether or not the continued presence of elected Irish peers in the Lords after 1922 was valid, and if not whether those who had remained in the Lords had been created peers by summons in error, as several Irish hereditaries were arguing. He replied by quashing the old rule which accepted that peerages created by mistake were valid (such as the barony of Strange of 1640, for example), and so sidestepped the specific issue relating to those Irish lords who lingered without re-election until as late as 1961.