Revealed 700 years on, the real (scarred) face of Robert the Bruce...
(...who was built like Wayne Rooney and had leprosy!)
he is our most celebrated national hero – the self-made king who led Scotland to independence and inflicted a humiliating defeat on the english against all odds.
But despite being depicted on banknotes, in film and song, what Robert the Bruce actually looked like has relied on little more than guesswork.
Now – more than 700 years after he sent edward II’s army homeward tae think again – historians have used crime-fighting technology to put a face to the name of the nation’s best-known ruler.
The results resemble both a fearsome warrior at the height of his powers and an ageing monarch bearing the scars of leprosy.
A Glasgow university team began with a cast of the king’s skull, made during the excavation of his grave at Dunfermline Abbey in 1818. They then enlisted the help of forensic experts in ‘craniofacial technology’ at Liverpool John Moores university (LJMu).
The technology – usually employed by police to reconstruct the appearance of unidentified bodies from their remains – uses computer modelling to map muscles and skin on to bone structures.
The final 3D images show that Bruce in his prime was a stocky, muscular man with a physique equal to today’s super-athletes.
Glasgow university history lecturer Dr Martin MacGregor, who drove the efforts to bring the Bruce to life, said: ‘he was supposedly 6ft 1in but the comparison we drew was more [5ft 9in] Wayne Rooney in terms of build and physique. he was a man of immense strength.’
But the historians also found evidence on the skull cast that Bruce suffered from leprosy before his death in 1329 at the age of 54. The later depictions show the ruler with mottled skin around his mouth and a collapsing nose.
Given the stigma of the infectious disease at the time, historians say, with such a grim appearance, it is testimony to the strength of his character he was still able to rule.
Dr MacGregor said: ‘[The project] was to bring science and history
‘Man of immense strength’
together and bring us closer to a king I have a lot of admiration for.’
For two years, LJMu’s Professor Caroline Wilkinson oversaw the facial modelling using the same technology she harnessed to recreate the features of Richard III.
She said the facial shape was relatively straightforward to depict accurately but added: ‘The difficult bit for us always is the texture that goes on the shape – the exact skin colour, how many wrinkles, what their skin looks like, what the hair on their head is, whether they’ve got facial hair.
‘That’s where we had to use historical evidence and most likely genetic variation.’
Professor David Gaimster, director of the hunterian Museum, which owns the Bruce skull cast, said: ‘We’re all absolutely fascinated to see this visualisation today. It shows this was a very, strong personality that was able to withstand the most awful infection and rule right to the bitter end.’
Bruce was born in Ayrshire in 1274 and killed his rival, John Comyn, to crown himself Robert I in 1306. his defeat of edward II’s much larger force at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 laid the ground for Scottish independence after 30 years of war.