The name comes from the old Irish toraí, meaning the hunted - outlaws, bandits, the kind of men who needed a place no one else wanted. After Cromwell broke royalist resistance in 17th-century Ireland, the loyalist remnants who fled to the hills became toraidhe, and the slur eventually attached itself to a whole political faction. The Tories of British politics, the Conservative Party of the 19th century, the modern Tory MP at Westminster - all of them owe their name to this 5-kilometre rock and the desperate fugitives who once made it a sanctuary. The island earned its reputation honestly. In 1608, when Sir Cahir O'Doherty's rebellion against the Tudors collapsed, his surviving forces fled to Tory and were besieged. Their end came through Pelham's Pardon, a brutally clever rule: any rebel could save his life by murdering one of his superior officers. The rebellion ate itself.

On the pier at West Town stands the Tau Cross, 1.9 metres of mica slate carved into a T-shape probably in the 12th century. Tau crosses are rare in the west of Ireland, most associated with St Anthony of Egypt and his desert hermits. How one ended up on a Donegal island has spawned the kind of legends Tory specializes in. Nearby stands the Round Tower, granite, dilapidated, truncated to 13 metres, possibly as old as the 6th century - which would make it one of the oldest in Ireland. These were monastery bell towers, not defenses, though their narrow doors set high up the wall have led generations of writers to assume otherwise. The monastery itself is gone, scrubbed away by time and weather. On the cliff edge at the eastern end of the island sits Dun Bhaloir, a redoubt cut into a narrow neck of land atop 100-metre sea-cliffs, possibly Iron Age. Balor was the cyclopean leader of the Fomorians in Irish mythology, his scorching gaze said to destroy enemies. Several legends place his fortress here.

Tory has a king. Not metaphorically - actually. The position is not hereditary but conferred by popular assent, and its most recent holder was Patsai Dan Mag Ruaidhri, known as Patsy Dan Rodgers, who held the title until his death in 2018. Patsy Dan led the 1970s resistance to evacuation. After a storm cut off the island for eight weeks in 1974, the Irish government, weary of subsidizing such places, tried to depopulate Tory the way so many other Irish island communities had ended. The islanders refused. They campaigned for electricity, for a continued ferry, for the basics of modern life that would let them stay. They won. Patsy Dan spent the next two decades personally greeting arrivals at the pier - an ambassador in a fisherman's cap, hand outstretched, welcoming visitors to his kingdom. The title has stood vacant since his death. The shoes are large.

The Tory Ferry sails from Magheroarty on the mainland - a 45-minute crossing of open Atlantic, foot passengers only, often with a swell. The whole island is five kilometres long, walkable end to end on a single lane. There is no shop. The Creggan Restaurant burned down in 2015 and never came back. There is no mobile signal. The bar, An Club, is the social heart. The hotel does good meals. Visitors are asked to report any rat sightings on arrival - Tory is rat-free, important for the ground-nesting seabirds that swirl around the cliffs, and the islanders intend to keep it that way. Photo evidence helps. Do not, the locals add, try to whack it yourself. The lighthouse on the western tip, lit in 1832, still warns shipping off the coast, automated now and incorporating a Differential GPS station. The Atlantic still pounds the cliffs. The puffins still arrive in spring. The king's seat still waits.