My take was that he was a particular type of modern bully: the passive aggressive or victimhood bully. The usage of supposed extreme hardship and suffering to win favour and status.
Arday used every lever he could to engineer his meteoric rise. I have watched some of the videos of his web seminars. He has very evidently rehearsed some of his lies and tried many of them out on an individual interviewer as a dry-run before going more 'public' with a falsehood once it has gone unchallenged in a selective setting. This all shows malice aforethought, not the kind of on-the-hoof embellishment that some may make in conversation to win favour or rapport.
The very considerable leverage he had over the academic gatekeepers clearly emboldened him - he became a Pied Piper figure. Yet of course the paradox of continued prominence and adulation brought the gaze of scrutiny open him. This is where the real bully showed his spots, with very disturbing claims of violent racist threats and intimidation (pigs head; knifeman etc.) , before instructing pugnacious lawyers and setting the Police on his challengers.
His story is not new. There was a famous case of Kaspar Hauser, the mute and illiterate boy who wanted to be a cavalryman and became a cause celebre in Germany in 1800's. The Arday story to a tee, including the bizarre death.
So a bully then, worthy only of pity as he was clearly an unstable fellow but never a man of the fibre he professed.
Condolences to his family.
Yes, some of the worst people manipulate using sob stories and victimhood, particularly from their childhood.
I think it is a form of 'covert narcissism' that relies on do-gooder enablers who act as flying monkeys for the narcissist.