IN what might be called the “Braveheartery” version of Scottish history, William Wallace was the real hero of the long battle for Scotland’s independence at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century. That’s mostly tosh. For a start, Wallace only came to prominence in 1297, led the Scots for little more than a year as Guardian, lost heavily at Falkirk, went into exile and was then captured and most heinously killed by Edward Longshanks in 1305, an execution that seriously backfired on the English King.

The Scottish Wars of Independence began in 1296 and did not really end until the Treaty of Berwick in 1357 returned David II to Scotland from English captivity, therefore it might be correct to acclaim Wallace as “a” liberator, but not “the” liberator.

For surely that title belongs to Robert the Bruce. Yes, Wallace was a huge factor in throwing off the yoke of the English, but it was the Bruce who, after Wallace’s brutal end, rose against the English and took the Scottish throne in 1306.

Despite much persecution, he rallied the Scots behind him, then won the Battle of Bannockburn, beat off internal dissent, oversaw the Declaration of Independence at Arbroath in 1320 and consolidated the power of the Scottish monarch until his death in 1329 shortly after the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton confirmed that England no longer claimed overlordship of Scotland.

The story of Bruce will be told in a three-part Back in the Day special on successive Tuesdays in The National over Christmas and New Year – history writers never get a break – but the reconstruction of his face unveiled this week once again begs the question of how he looked.

There are no statues or drawings from the life of King Robert I of Scotland. That was simply a fact of royal life in medieval times and late into the Middle Ages.

Not since the Romans carved busts of just about everybody had any royals in the western world seriously attempted to immortalise themselves in artworks. The technology of painting in oils on canvas did not exist until the Renaissance and there are simply no surviving marble or stone busts of any Scottish or English king before 1388 when a “king” statue was carved from stone – it now stands in Westminster Hall and we do not even know which king it was.

The only exception to that failure to be pictured was when kings and queens were depicted on their tombs. We know that Robert the Bruce was interred – apart from his heart – in a magnificent tomb in Dunfermline Abbey, and in one of the most disgraceful acts of the Reformation in 1560 the tomb was smashed to pieces. The skull on which the reconstruction was based was found in the splinters of that tomb, so in the absence of other evidence, it must be concluded the face we see today is a close approximation of what Robert the Bruce looked like.

For more on Bruce’s supposed leprosy and final years, read Back In The Day at Christmas.