A few notes here on characterization, facts, and that awful final scene.
So. Obviously this is historical, revisionism, fantasy, so this is NOT the real people it's not meant to portray the real people. That said.
With people like Courtenay, I really have very little to go on, so far as the real person. Several accounts say he was beautiful, we know he and Henry became friends in their youth, and he shows up as working for Henry rather early in life. He was known as the 'Flower of Devon' for his beauty, but he was a priest. He was noted to be very clever. He was Henry's treasurer and remained by his side. Courtenay died during the siege of Harflour, in the royal tent, in Henry's arms, and Henry reportedly wept, and helped prepared his body. And then of course Henry ordered for them to be buried together. So. That's not a lot to go on so obviously I've fleshed him out a bit but in keeping with this person who was the great king's intellectual equal, who for all intents and purposes, loved his King, and his King did love him, his actions speak to that.
Henry obviously, we've got loads more information on. Not a lot personal, sadly, it's a lot of movements, and his various tax schemes and ways to raise money for his war. He was undeniably a brilliant man, his intellect was probably only matched by Courtenay, if that. I won't regurgitate Henry's full biography here. But a lot of little things I try to work into his character or his actions I try to you know, keep in line with the real person to do honor to that, as this is of course not portraying any of his real life it's over a decade after he should have died. The final scene of this book I admit is brutal but, honestly, if we're working off the assumption that magic is real and all this, then I think it's fully in line with the risks Henry took to get what he wanted. Also he was not a very merciful guy, he did, a whole lot worse, killing many innocent people in his wars, and executing captives. He was an unrepentant, unforgiving, brutally fierce warlord. The french hated, and deeply feared this man, the English loved him. He was charming, gracious, and undeniably clever. He did his own accounts after Courtenay's death, almost obsessively, balancing the country's budget even on campaign and keeping a ridiculous number of schemes going to keep funding his precious wars. He forbid his men to consort with sex workers, while on campaign, and told them off for drinking, and he himself spent most of his free time answering correspondence and going over his money. He's a fascinating character study and his crimes are as undeniable as his brilliance. He was known for his cruelty to his enemies calling himself "God's scourge upon sinners".
Anyway. I've read through much of his correspondence, and noted quotes, to get a feel for the character and Henry's speech. I'd try to work in little things as well, like at one point he said that "war without fire was like sausage without mustard" as in there was no point in it. So, I would work in things like that, like him eating sausages with mustard because obviously he did. Little fun things like that I do try to drop in, even if this isn't intended to be a biopic or anything like that. Similarly like we're never going to know, how he and Catherine would have gotten on if he'd lived, but he didn't ask for her, even though she was but a few hours away, when he was ill and dying, he asked for his brothers to be brought but not her, so do with that what you will.
For more information on Henry, there are a lot of good sources out there, the usual encyclopedias and the like the book "Henry V as Warlord" by Desmond Seward, which is free on erenow.net, is an excellent resource as well.
My reasons for including the final scene on page were this. Henry killed a lot of people in his wars, which we tend to brush over as it was war, well it was a war he started. So the final scene of this takes away a bit of that, and adds more culpability. Because Henry was a cruel man, he killed to get what he wanted, going so far as to disinherit his own step-mother to fund his war, this wasn't an empathetic man, this was a man who would march his army through a dead of winter for his own pride, simply put whose chosen sport was war. And he played it well and he won but that involved human casualties. And Courtenay similarly enabled this, he knew what he was doing he knew there was no real cause for war with France on this scale he did it anyway. And too often these, modern portrayals of Henry show him as hesitant to go to war, or protecting England, when that's not at all true he entirely planned his war and enjoyed it for all appearances. So let him be bad, give him the agency on that, it was his. Biography's will show, if Henry saw a chance for Henry to get ahead he took it with little regard for human life. And I only defend my decision here, because, I know he's a lot of people''s hero. And to be clear I didn't write seven books about the guy because I don't like him. I do love him he's fascinating to me I am entirely Gideon, you know, reading about all of this to give myself strength in my world. But I'm still trying to do Henry justice here and portray him, as close to how he was. Ruthless, brilliant, focused, driven, sometimes described by his men as 'in human'. But always our Henry.
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