King Richard III’s voice is revealed greater than 500 years after his loss of life – are you able to guess his accent?

The voice of England’s ‘most maligned monarch’ has been revealed more than 500 years after his death, thanks to state-of-the-art technology. 

Richard III was king of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, aged 32, where he was succeeded by Henry Tudor. 

As the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and the House of York, Richard III’s defeat and death at Bosworth Field marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. 

He is often portrayed as ‘history’s villain’ — a usurper of the throne and a wicked uncle who murdered his two nephews The Princes in the Tower. 

Now, more than a decade after his remains were found in a Leicester car park, experts have recreated his voice — and given him a Yorkshire accent.

The project, called A Voice For King Richard III, came about during at a conference for vocal coaches as their post-dinner entertainment. 

A team based at Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University created an avatar based on the reconstruction of King Richard III’s head, while his voice was created by Professor David Crystal, a leading linguist in 15th Century pronunciation.

Professor Crystal said it is impossible to know exactly how he spoke, but this is as close as they will get.   

The avatar of Richard III’s head has gone on display at York Theatre Royal for history buffs 

Richard III was king of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, aged 32

In 2012 Philippa Langley famously identified the very spot in a Leicester car park beneath which lay the skeleton of the 15th century king, Richard III (pictured)

Vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm said she spent a decade researching how the monarch would have sounded and worked with actor Thomas Dennis who was chosen as his body and face were a good physical match. 

King Richard was born in Northampton but spent a lot of his life in Yorkshire. His parents were also from the north of England. 

He had strong roots to the county, having spent much of his youth living at Middleham Castle. 

Experts from various fields helped out with the project, including speech and language therapists, dentists, forensic psychologists and archaeologists.

Listening to the clip today, historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo told Sky News: ‘I think this is quite remarkable and it goes to show the leaps and bounds we have come that we can actually get so close to knowing, perhaps, what Richard III must have sounded like.

Archeologists mark out the site at Greyfriars car park in Leicester during the search for King Richard III, as they are watched by actors dressed as Knights from Historic Equitation Ltd

‘This was a huge multi-year project this not only involved historians and linguists but it included dentists, it included craniologists, it included ear nose and throat specialists who of course have the skull of King Richard III as well.

‘This is the most multi-disciplinary attempt to try and get an idea of what he sounded like and that is important not only for royal history, it’s important to help us understand how people spoke in this era when we had Middle English.’

The avatar of the medieval king’s head has now gone on display at York Theatre Royal. 

Richard III was thought to be buried at Grey Friars, a Franciscan friary destroyed during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, but it was later claimed his body was thrown into a river.

In the early 1600s the site of Grey Friars was bought by the mayor of Leicester, Alderman Robert Herrick, and used as his garden.

In 1612 Christopher Wren, father of the famous architect, recorded seeing a 3ft stone pillar in the garden inscribed: ‘Here lies the body of Richard III, sometime King of England.’ The site was bought by Leicester City Council in 1914.

In 2012, the remains of Richard III were discovered within the site of the former Grey Friary Priory in Leicester by a team of historians and archeologists. 

Following extensive anthropological and genetic testing, the remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral in 2015.