Contrary to what Shakespeare and Netflix’sThe Kingwould have you believe, King Henry V of England wasn’t a wayward youth reluctant to lead, and he didn’t go to war with France over a bunch of tennis balls.
Nearly two centuries after Henry V ’s death , William Shakespeare set up the medieval king ’s name into pop culture stardom with his historical fiction playsHenry quaternity : Part I , Henry IV : Part IIandHenry V.
Since then , the warrior king that excellently vote out the French at the Battle of Agincourt has been the stuff of caption . Netflix’sThe King , asterisk Timothée Chalamet as the nominal role , is only the latest in a recollective tradition of play , novels , films , and goggle box dramas inspire by Shakespeare ’s shimmer .
But if we peel away the dramatic license of the Bard and Netflix , who was the real Isle of Man behind all the myth ?
Wikimedia CommonsHenry V’s father, Henry IV, at his coronation.
Young Prince Hal, Son Of A Usurper
Despite his later fame , very small is known of Henry V ’s early year . In fact , we do not even bang for certain what year he was put up . In either 1386 or 1387 , Henry Bolingbroke , earl of Derby , and his wife Mary de Bohun , welcome their first - born Logos Henry at their rook in present - day Monmouth , Wales .
Henry ’s father , who would later be Henry IV , was a outstanding noble and a first cousin of the reigning Martin Luther King , Richard II . He was one of the leadership of a rebellion against Richard , and when he was bar in 1398 , young Henry was read as the king ’s surety .
Wikimedia CommonsHenry V ’s Father of the Church , Henry IV , at his investiture .
British Library/Wikimedia CommonsA miniature showing Henry as Prince of Wales, offering or receiving a book. The kneeling man is perhaps John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk.
Interestingly , Henry became close with his captor , who treated him surprisingly well given the lot . In fact , Richard gave the boy an annual margin of £ 500 , fetch him along on his expedition to Ireland , and even knighted him .
In their absence seizure , Henry ’s forefather yield from exile and gained popular financial backing in England . By 1399 , Bolingbroke seized the commode , claiming a right wing to the crown through his lineage from Henry III , and dress for Richard II ’s conventional deposit in Parliament . He was crowned Henry IV , the first male monarch from the Lancastrian branch of the House of Plantagenet .
This made young Henry the new Prince of Wales .
Wikimedia CommonsActor Lewis Waller playing Henry V in Shakespeare’s 1599 play.
Henry studied at the Queen ’s College at Oxford under the guardianship of his uncle , another Henry : Henry Beaufort , a Catholic bishop . He became doting of music and recitation at an other age , learning to interpret and drop a line in the vernacular tongue of English , which would try important in later year .
Owing to Shakespeare ’s liberalblendingof fact with fabrication in his historical dramas , Prince Henry — or “ Prince Hal , ” as the Bard famously dub him — has gone down in history as a reckless young rogue .
British Library / Wikimedia CommonsA miniature showing Henry as Prince of Wales , offering or receive a record . The kneeling man is perhaps John Mowbray , 2nd Duke of Norfolk .
NetflixTimothée Chalamet plays King Henry V of England inThe King.
Henry IV : Part IandHenry IV : Part IIfocus on the early class of Prince Hal and his fierce comrade Falstaff ( a pretended character cook up by Shakespeare and wager by Joel Edgerton inThe Kingthat was loosely ground on a genuine military personnel named John Oldcastle , a former friend of Henry ’s that he by and by executed for heterodoxy and rebellion ) .
Together , they purportedly pass their time playing harlequinade , consorting with thief and drunks , and overtake out after farsighted nighttime at the tap house . WhenThe Kingopens , Prince Hal is estranged from his don , dilute off from the line of sequence in favor of his new brother , completely uninterested in politics and knee joint - deep in teenage debauchery .
harmonize to Shakespeare ’s romp , it is only after Henry ’s father died that he short transformed and matured ; or , as his case famouslydeclares , he was like a brainy sun ( a play on son , or heir ) waiting to come out from behind the cloud .
Wikimedia CommonsAn illustration from Cassell’s History of England, circa 1902.
Historians have since debated the historicity of this “ prince - gone - wild ” prodigal son persona . In world , Prince Henry play an important role in his Church Father ’s regime , and it was his political involvement — not his suppose political indifference — that often led to disagreements between father and Logos .
Wikimedia CommonsActor Lewis Waller play Henry V in Shakespeare ’s 1599 free rein .
But the detrition that may have survive between them was nothing like what Shakespeare and now Netflix made it out to be — nor was there any debate that he was his father ’s heir .
British Library/Wikimedia CommonsThe dauphin Louis of France, son of King Charles VI.
And nor was Prince Hal the angsty teenage pacificist thatThe Kingromantically paint him as , rendering him more toothsome to our twenty-first - hundred sensibilities . The diachronic Prince Hal spent 10 years of his youth on the battlefield , fighting for his father , helping him ward off ill-affected lords that saw him as a usurper .
In 1403 , the 16 - yr - old prince agitate his first battle against yet another Henry : the disaffected nobleman Henry “ Hotspur ” Percy . The young prince demonstrated hard military potential and led his father ’s forces to triumph ( unlike inThe King , when Prince Hal declare that “ if it were up to me , there will be no struggle , ” choosing to agitate Hotspur in a one - on - one duel to debar unnecessary expiration of hands ) .
However , the battle did materialize , and henearly perishedafter an arrow lodged six inches into his skull , directly beneath his eye and narrowly missing his brain and spinal cord . At this degree , he became something of a national champion ; one historiographer called Henry ’s injury the “ marke of his manhood . ”
Antoine Leduc, Sylvie Leluc et Olivier Renaudeau (dir.), D’Azincourt à Marignan. Chevaliers et bombardes, 1515-1515, Paris, Gallimard / Musée de l’armée, 2015, p. 18-19 | Wikimedia CommonsAn early 15th-century miniature of the Battle of Agincourt (1415).
NetflixTimothée Chalamet plays King Henry V of England inThe King .
After the Battle of Shrewsbury , Prince Henry drop the next five years protecting his father ’s summit against anotherrebellion , this time led by Owain Glyndŵr in Wales .
King Henry V Of England
After Henry ’s don died of an sickness in 1413 , the 26 - year - old prince was crowned King Henry V of England . His coronation ceremony took place inWestminster Abbeyon April 9 , 1413 , and the snow that fell that daylight was interpret as a mark that difficult times would come .
On the domestic front , like his father , Henry V faced critique and conspiracies from both former friends and longtime enemies who rejected his legitimacy and desire to place Richard II ’s heir , Edmund Mortimer , on the can alternatively .
Wikimedia CommonsAn illustration from Cassell ’s account of England , circa 1902 .
Wikimedia CommonsA 19th-century painting by Sir John Gilbert showing the muddy fields at the Battle of Agincourt.
InThe King , the loath raw ruler insist “ I am not my father , ” pushing off his advisors , who keep nagging him to go to state of war . He also declares that the men who were his Church Father ’s enemy , the malcontent lords , will be pardoned and forgiven , and that a new peace will be add about in England .
In reality , it was Henry ’s father that had need peace . The new Henry V need war .
He protect his crown and crushed these rising , often demonstrate a brutal side by refusing to show mercy to his defeat opponent .
Wikimedia CommonsA painting dated before 1494 depicting the marriage ceremony of Henry V of England and Catherine of Valois.
Interestingly , one of his first moves as king of a united England was to inclose the formal use of goods and services of English in all government proceeding , making him the first ruler to use the vernacular rather than French or Latin , as had been accustomed since the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 .
Next , Henry V turned his eyes toward France .
British Library / Wikimedia CommonsThe dauphin Louis of France , son of King Charles VI .
Wikimedia CommonsKing Henry V of England died at the Château de Vincennes in Paris, mere weeks before he would have taken over the French throne.
According to Shakespeare , the new English power was convinced by two bishops that he was the rightful king of France due to his ancestry . In response to his title , the French Dauphin supposedly send a barrel of tennis balls across the Channel as an revilement to his maturity , and Henry set sail at once to revenge the contemptuous jape .
InThe King , a rickety old archbishop starts droning on with a list-processing language about an ancient law of nature that was used to preclude Henry ’s ascendent from inherit the French toilet that should be contested ( this was the Salic Law ) . Henry responds with confusion , enquire what he is talking about and brushing off the archbishop ’s eternal “ bleating . ”
In world , the English planetary house of Plantagenet and the French family of Valois had been hire in a complex dispute for generation at this point , know now as the Hundred Years ’ War .
Soon after he was crown , Henry V decided to renew England ’s military campaigns in France and developed an ambitious lean of demands .
Not only did he want the French to turn back land that was lost to his ancestors , including Aquitaine , Normandy , Touraine , and Maine , but he also wanted the French to pay a staggering amount of 2 million crowns , and he wanted Catherine of Valois , the girl of Charles VI , King of France , as his bride .
Henry ’s replenishment of the Anglo - Gallic war was therefore not a personal quarrel between two new competitor , and the lawn tennis ball picture has beendiscreditedas a all over fabrication that served as comic easing in Shakespeare ’s dramatisation .
The French Wars And The Battle Of Agincourt
Henry V set sail to France in 1415 , just two years after his coronation . His early battlefield experience prepared him well : He cursorily began call for victory .
The Royal Family ’s official website call him a “ brilliant full general ” — in stark contrast to the haphazard and spasmodic military operation the English planned in the old century .
Antoine Leduc , Sylvie Leluc et Olivier Renaudeau ( dir . ) , D’Azincourt à Marignan . chevalier et bombardes , 1515 - 1515 , Paris , Gallimard / Musée de l’armée , 2015 , p. 18 - 19 | Wikimedia CommonsAn former fifteenth - century miniature of the Battle of Agincourt ( 1415 ) .
First , in August 1415 , he laid beleaguering to the port townsfolk of Harfleur and captured it after attacking the city with his large fleet . In Shakespeare ’s interpretation , Henry V rallies his troops before the siege bybeckoningthem to fall in him “ once more upon the breach , darling friends , once more . ”
When French defense prevent him from crossing the Somme River with his 6,000 - inviolable army , the French intercepted him at the city of Agincourt . On October 25 , 1415 — St. Crispin ’s Clarence Day — Henry once again rag his scout troop with a powerful speech — at least according to Shakespeare . In the child’s play , his fictitious character urges his “ striation of brothers ” to have braveness .
This dramatized speech , one of the most famous speeches in history , was furtherimmortalizedwhen Laurence Olivier used it to raise British morale during World War II and when Kenneth Branagh recited it in his 1989 picture rendition ofHenry V ; now , the terminus “ band of buddy ” is a slogan for the romantic impression of ace and comradery in combat .
Alas , according to mediaeval popular historianDan Jones , the speech was “ entirely manufacture . ”
Wikimedia CommonsA nineteenth - one C picture by Sir John Gilbert designate the muddy field at the Battle of Agincourt .
However , he says that the tone that the Shakespearean Henry V use in the manoeuvre equalise the grandeur of the note that the real Henry used in the letter he prescribe from the frontlines . The speeches ’ parole may not have been based in historical fact , but the spirit of them was .
At the Battle of Agincourt , now one of the most legendary battles in English history , the massively outnumber English force ( evenconservative estimatessay the French outnumbered them 2 to 1 ) overcome the French due to the expertness of their longbow arches and the luck of the atmospheric condition , the unceasing rain turn the battleground into a sea of mud that the French soldiers drown in , weighed down by heavy armor .
Henry V And Catherine Of Valois
Henry V returned home victorious , his operation at Agincourt solidifying his herculean position on the European political leg . The Holy Roman Emperor honored him with a visit in 1416 , and together they carry off to end the papal schism when Martin V became the new Vicar of Christ in 1417 .
But contrary to what we would recollect after watching Agincourt as the dramatic climax to Henry V ’s life in Shakespeare ’s play andThe King , this was not the oddment in reality .
Wikimedia CommonsA painting dated before 1494 depicting the marriage ceremony of Henry V of England and Catherine of Valois .
Henry sailed back to France in 1417 and launch a new drive of sieges , continuing his workplace on the field . By 1419 , he conquered Rouen , the capital of Normandy , bringing the duchy into English control .
These triumph forced France to its knee and King Charles VI fit to the term of the Treaty of Troyes on May 21 , 1420 , which named Henry V as the true inheritor to the French crown , disinheriting the Dauphin . The treaty also betroth him to the French Princess Catherine of Valois ( played by Lily - Rose Depp inThe King ) , the young daughter of the French king .
On June 2 , 1420 , Henry and Catherine were marry at Troyes Cathedral . Their union was not the love match that plays , films , and novels have idyllically suggest ; nor did they conjoin immediately after the Gallic frustration at Agincourt .
The Final Years
Henry V and Catherine of Valois come in England in 1421 and she gave giving birth to their only son who — you guessed it — they named Henry .
Wikimedia CommonsKing Henry V of England died at the Château de Vincennes in Paris , mere week before he would have taken over the French throne .
In the meantime , Henry V had already return to France yet again after the death of his younger crony , who was still fight back on French filth . He continue to push for French territory and betroth in the complicated politics of the nation which he was supposed to inherit .
In October 1421 , he led a siege on the French city of Meaux . The battle was hard and long — it stretch on for seven month — and during the bitter winter Henry V fall ill . He suffer from battlefield dysentery and died on Aug. 31 , 1422 , just diffident of his thirty-sixth birthday .
The Word he bequeath behind , though less than nine calendar month honest-to-goodness , was quickly proclaim King Henry VI . The difficult clock time that Henry V ’s coronation snowfall foretold issue forth to be with his Logos , whose tragic reign was riddle with bouts of mental health struggles and the red ink of most of the French territories that his begetter had fought so hard to conquer .
After learning about the life of King Henry V of England , take a flavour at thecomplicated lineage of the British Royal Family . Then , check outCharles II , the inbred Spanish king who was so ugly he daunt his own wife .
