The adult Henry proved to be a mere shadow of his predecessor, and in 1461, he was deposed by his cousin Edward, Duke of York. His 9-month-old son, Henry VI, succeeded a father he had never met, setting the stage for a prolonged regency in which advisers ruled on the boy king’s behalf. Struck by dysentery, an often fatal infection nicknamed the “ bloody flux,” while laying siege to the French city of Meaux, the king died just shy of his 35th or 36th birthday.
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Surprisingly, the movie fails to address the longstanding French conflict’s most significant casualty: Henry himself. As one eyewitness later recalled, “The living fell on the dead, and others falling on the living were killed in turn.” The Battle of Agincourt, an October 1415 face-off that cemented Henry’s status in the annals of history, takes center stage, but it’s the crush of bodies left on the field following the bloodbath that resonates more than the king’s rallying speech. The King traces the broad strokes of Henry’s life, placing particular emphasis on the human cost of his military exploits. A scar on his right cheek-the result of an arrow that struck just below his eye at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403-belied the “certain innocence about his expression, a vestige of the earnestness of boyhood.” His thick brown hair was “cut short at the sides and the back,” and his physique was slim yet athletic. “He had a long face, a straight nose, and a broad forehead,” historian Ian Mortimer writes in Henry V: The Warrior King of 1415. His Henry is younger, less battle-hardened than these predecessors, a reluctant rather than decisive warrior, albeit one with a striking resemblance to the main surviving likeness. Now, I find myself king.”Ĭhalamet, best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, steps into a role previously played by the likes of Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hiddleston. "As prince, I spent my days drinking, clowning.
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“A new chapter of my life has begun," Chalamet's Henry V says in the film's trailer. Although The King presents its subject as more realistically flawed than most representations, a sense of his character-how he commanded such loyalty, for instance, or why he pursued goals with a single-minded determination bordering on frenzy-remains evasive. Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henriad, a collection of three of the Bard’s history plays, Netflix’s historical drama alternately debunks and perpetuates the many larger-than-life stories surrounding its subject, whose nine-year reign saw a flourishing of royal authority and military action but ended abruptly with his untimely death in 1422. … As prince, I spent my days drinking, clowning. As a newly crowned Henry declares in the movie’s trailer, “A new chapter of my life has begun. The King, a new biopic starring Timothée Chalamet as its eponymous monarch, examines these seemingly discordant aspects of Henry’s life by tracing its subject’s path from wayward adolescent to heroic warrior. His legacy is one of success, but as historian Peter Ackroyd argues, the triumphs of his military conquests soon faded, leaving “very little … to celebrate” and lending credence to the idea that “all was done for the pride of princes.” He had a reputation for prudent judgment and chivalrous behavior, but in the aftermath of his victory at Agincourt, took the unprecedented step of ordering the execution of all unarmed prisoners. Henry was a formidable warrior-perhaps the greatest the country has ever seen-but thanks to his closely cropped haircut, looked more like a priest than a soldier. In youth, he was reportedly an “ assiduous cultivator of lasciviousness,” but upon ascending to the throne of England in the early 15th century, he won plaudits for his piety. Photos via Netflix and iStock Photo Illustration by Meilan Solly
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Henry V's nine-year reign saw a flourishing of royal authority and military action but ended abruptly with his untimely death in 1422