Henry V

[ajaxfetish]

The list of his atrocities is long indeed. During Henry's siege of Rouen, when the city released thousands of civilians they could no longer feed, King Henry did not let them go but had them herded into the ditches surrounding the city and watched them starve to death day after day. If a child was born in the ditch, it was brought up in a basket, christened, and sent back down to starve to death with its mother. This is just one example of his behaviour.

And I believe the same thing happened to several hundred civilians during Philip II's siege of Chateau Gaillard in 1203-04. It's a terrible thing, but it doesn't seem particularly uncharacteristic for the time. I don't think it sets Henry very far from his contemporaries in villainy.

Ajax

[Beirut]

And I believe the same thing happened to several hundred civilians during Philip II's siege of Chateau Gaillard in 1203-04. It's a terrible thing, but it doesn't seem particularly uncharacteristic for the time. I don't think it sets Henry very far from his contemporaries in villainy.

Ajax

Perhaps not, but the reality seems far removed from Shakespeare's portrait of him.

He might not have been that much worse, but I can't imagine he was any better.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I wouldn't take Shakers word on much especially anything historical. The way he destroyed the reputation of Macbeth, a king who was by no means as bad as the way the playwright potrayed him to be, was just ridiculous

[ajaxfetish]

I wouldn't take Shakers word on much especially anything historical. The way he destroyed the reputation of Macbeth, a king who was by no means as bad as the way the playwright potrayed him to be, was just ridiculous

Completely agreed. Richard III is also badly misrepresented thanks to the propaganda aspect of Shakespeare's plays. They're damned good fiction, and with a historical basis for the histories at least and some of the others, but they aren't history. On a sidenote, I think Shakespeare's Henry makes an interesting contrast to his Richard as a heroic and praiseworthy Machiavellian character compared to the traditional villified version.

Ajax