A voice for King Richard III has been created using state-of-the-art technology, giving him a Yorkshire accent.
A digital avatar of the medieval king went on display in front of history buffs at York Theatre Royal on Sunday.
Richard III was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485 at the age of 32.
His remains were discovered in 2012 under a car park in Leicester by Philippa Langley through her Looking For Richard Project. They were identified using a range of scientific disciplines including DNA analysis.
For voice teacher and vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm, the voice project came about more than 10 years ago as after-dinner entertainment to compare Shakespeare’s Richard III with what is known of the real man.
It developed quickly into a research project with a unique focus – to explore the possibility of recreating a voice for the long-dead King.
A team at Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University created an avatar based on a reconstruction of Richard III’s head, led by cranio-facial identification expert Professor Caroline Wilkinson.
Experts from various fields helped put the pieces of the puzzle together, including speech and language therapy, dentistry, forensic psychology and archaeology.
Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth on August 22 1485. He was the last King of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty.
His defeat at Bosworth was the penultimate battle in the Wars of the Roses and ushered in the Tudor dynasty.
Ms Langley’s search for the King’s grave was the subject of the award-winning TV documentary: Richard III: The King In The Car Park.
