Another Royal facial reconstruction

This time it is Robert I, whlebruso claimed the Scottish throne in 1306 and whose descendants have reigned there ever since, except for the Commonwealth years. The legendary warrior and probable leprosy sufferer was buried in Dunfermline Abbey and disinterred nearly two centuries ago.

Note that the reconstruction work from his skull was done by Dundee alumna Professor Caroline Wilkinson, now at Liverpool John Moores University. Sadly, no mtDNA line is available.

By super blue

Grandson of a Town player.


  1. Can anyone explain why the reconstructions of other historical royal personages tend to look like real people, whereas the one done of Richard III does not. I notice that the same person did both Richard and Robert, yet Robert does look very life-like.


    1. I’m not sure what you mean by that. The reconstruction of Richard III looks like a real person, as far as I can tell.

      Except when they slap that terrible blond wig on it and paint his face white and pink, then it looks like a badly done Barbie Doll.


      1. Just doesn’t seem lifelike to me, whereas the Robert Bruce one does. Perhaps it is just the way his skin has been represented that makes all the difference.


      2. Heh! also perhaps Richard’s ‘reconstruction’ looks, to some, too much like his best-known portrait to be ‘real.’ We have no contemporary portraits of Robert, so he can look like anybody – your Uncle Bob, for example. I agree – that blond wig is ridiculous. If there is a 75% chance he was fair, it follows that there was a 1 in 4 chance that he was dark. Out of a family of 12-13 children there must have been several brunets. Or at least blonds who darkened up to a sort of intermediate sandy color


Leave a comment


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s


%d bloggers like this: