Richard III not psychopath of Shakespeare’s play say experts

Psychologists from the University of Leicester said they hoped to “flesh out the bones” and get to the character of the man who has became one of the most controversial kings in English history.

Professor Mark Lansdale, head of the University’s School of Psychology, and forensic psychologist Dr Julian Boon, carried out the study based on the consensus among historians on the monarch’s experiences and actions.

Firstly, they examined one of the most persistent and critical depictions of Richard’s personality – the suggestion that he was a murdering psychopath.

“This reputation, portrayed most famously in Shakespeare’s play, does not seem to have any basis in the facts we have about his life,” they concluded.

They said they found few signs of the traits psychologists would use to identify psychopaths – such as narcissism, deviousness, callousness, recklessness and lack of empathy.

However, they believe the monarch, whose remains were found under a council car park in Leicester city centre last summer, may have exhibited a common psychological syndrome know as an intolerance to uncertainty – which may have made him a “control freak”.

Professor Lansdale, head of the university’s school of psychology, said: “This syndrome is associated with a need to seek security following an insecure childhood, as Richard had. In varying degrees, it is associated with a number of positive aspects of personality including a strong sense of right and wrong, piety, loyalty to trusted colleagues, and a belief in legal processes – all exhibited by Richard.

“On the negative side it is also associated with fatalism, a tendency to disproportionate responses when loyalty is betrayed and a general sense of ‘control freakery’ that can, in extreme cases, emerge as very authoritarian or possibly priggish.”

The former monarch, whose remains were sensationally discovered under a car park last year, is currently at the centre of an argument with many people in the region keen to bring him back to his native Yorkshire to be laid to rest. However it appears he will instead be interred at Leicester Cathedral.

The experts also looked at how his disability, evident in the curvature of the spine of the King’s remains, may have had an impact on his character and how he interacted with people around him.

It may have made him cautious as deformation in medieval times was linked to having a twisted soul.

Professor Lansdale concluded: “Overall, we recognise the difficulty of drawing conclusions about people who lived 500 years ago and about whom relatively little is reliably recorded; especially when psychology is a science that is so reliant upon observation.

“However, noting that this is the problem historians work with as a matter of routine, we argue that a psychological approach provides a distinct and novel perspective: one which offers a different way of thinking about the human being behind the bones.”