Rather than plucking a number from thin air, just imagine where he would rank in your high school class -- where you assume IQ is normally distributed but shifted right a little. IME there were a couple people dumber than Russ, so ... 85 to 95 as the user above estimated sounds right to me.
I've always put him at about 85-90, despite his relative skill with written language, because I've observed people with actual developmental disabilities who were still able to write remarkably well. Colt Seidman, over in the Rat King forum, is one of them; her posts are well-written enough to make you believe she's not actually a tard in need of a wrangler or group home setting until you've seen her in action long enough.
His relative fluency in his writing combines nicely with his utter inability to use any saying or colloquialism properly.
The narcissism bubble he lives in definitely accounts for his lack of motivation to learn or better himself, he's already decided he's great so why try harder? Any implication hes not already perfect is too painful to countenance. Why make even the most minimal effort to improve his understanding of the law or his personal grooming?
The thing is, I've encountered enough Narcissists to know that most of them are constantly attuned to how they might improve themselves (or at least the image they project) in order to impress others.
Narcs don't want to be seen as deficient; they want to stay on top within their social/professional circle. If they believe that learning something new will assist them in that--be it something simple like how to better style their hair, or something as complicated as going to law/grad school--they'll do it, and depending upon how important it is to their prestige, they can be really diligent and devoted to learning.
Russell is unusual for a Narc in that he puts in no effort to improve his skills, his knowledge base, or his appearance, which is why it's easy for me to believe he might have some level of ASD or some other cognitive deficit as well. He's an abject failure even at being a Narcissist, totally unable to fool others into believing he's better, more likeable, and more accomplished than he actually is, because he simply can't grasp the meaning of anything beyond a very superficial level. How can you use symbols of status to successfully manipulate others when you barely possess a surface-level understanding of them?
He can grasp that a suit is what successful men who get respect wear. He can grasp that women like to see a well-dressed man, and to him a suit automatically means well-dressed. But that's it. He doesn't understand that there are myriad other factors involved in a suit's conveying the message, "I am a successful man with desirable qualities": the quality of the suit; how well it fits; the color and type of fabric; the quality, fit, and color of the shirt worn with it; the color and knot of the tie; the quality, color, and appropriatenesd of the shoes; that everything is clean and pressed and in good repair; and that it is being worn in the proper social or professional context. He doesn't understand any of that stuff.
He has absolutely no clue about any of those finer details, so he wears a suit in the most cargo cultist way imaginable, can't understand why it doesn't get him the results it should, and blames others for not responding to it in the correct way--because as far as he can tell, he's doing everything right. What is wrong with people?!
That's not Narcissism (though it does play a role in why he wears the suit in the first place, and why he reacts as he does). That's a critically impaired ability to reason, to make inferences, to understand nuance, and to use feedback from his evironment to adjust his behavior until he starts getting the results he wants.
Whatever his innate intelligence he makes himself stagnate by refusing to learn anything or put in intellectual effort.
Sometimes, I think it's not so much a refusal to learn anything as an inability to understand why he needs to learn something new, or even a failure to comprehend that there is any other way to do something besides the one he knows.
Honestly, the longer I watch Russell, the more convinced I am that he's not so much a Narcissist who isn't very bright, but rather a borderline retard who is also afflicted with NPD. His thinking is so rigid, so formulaic, and so lacking in nuance he's practically an NPC in the game that is his own life. He just keeps repeating the same patterns because that's all he's programmed to do, and he can't write new ones for himself.
). While, yeah, I'm sure the right guy in the right suit might get some compliments, if you ask a 20-something woman what kind of outfit they think looks best on a guy they're probably going to go with something more fashionable and casual. He seems to think that women are completely oblivious to men's fashion and that just the existence of a suit hanging off his weird neanderthal body is enough to get panties soaking
