Violent Ends (Violent Delights Book 19)

Letters :) :) :) (Fun!)

So, these are actual historical letters pulled from my reference materials. Just for fun, I've. pulled them for you to read. They are interesting because you get the actual person's voice in the letter, Henry V's are quite fun he's so eloquent. The letter they quote in the novel is in full here, with the greatest sentence in the world underlined.

So this is Henry IV to future Henry V who is prince of Wales here. We have no date on this but it's in regards to Henry V asking for some money to fund his siege going on in Wales, and Henry IV is just so epically bitchy, to, given the letter, his actual 16-18 year old child, it's terrible.

Here's one of Henry V's letters, early on like he's 16 here it's marvelous he's so exact and to the point. This is instructions for a clerk.

This is the Archbishop of Dublin telling Henry IV 'come get your child' because 13 year old Thomas is in Ireland starving, unable to cope. No reply. Then the next one is Thomas saying the same thing, that letter is ripped no reply. Yeah Henry IV is up for parenting awards here (not).

The greatest letter ever written Henry V (and Courtenay) would have done so well on social media. This is his open letter. Just gaslight your dad Henry, please, he deserves it.

This is the only letter we have believed to be in Henry V's own hand. Note the unevenness of the text, and the tendency for the ends of words to tip upward to the previous line, a symptom possibly of writing with the page rotated to accommodate a left-hander. This is from the book '1415', in the references. By contrast most other contemporaries, have very neat, 'even' writing. 

Here is the same letter, with significant words underlined. Notice how often he gets off line, and the ends of the words drift up to the previous line, which is nearly impossible to do writing left to right, right handed, but is entirely easy to do left handed, writing top to bottom. Knowing Henry, this also could have been some sort of secret code.

For contrast here is a letter by Richard III, in his own hand. Note how his lines are crisp and even, and though the entire letter is concave...typical when writing without lines, the lines follow each other as opposed to above nearly bouncing about. Courtesy of the Richard III society....it's a letter to his mother. Obviously a different hand and yes different time, but note the obvious spacing and neat lines, the words are all quite level, compared to the above. We know it's Richard's hand also he said 'in my own hand', doesn't he have lovely penmanship? So neat and such small script compared to Henry's.

here's a list of signatures. Third one in is Henry V, as you see he, and he alone, wrote his name backwards, presumably because he was left handed and was writing it right to left. It starts with Richard 2 who tried his best (he signed his name as a child as well we'll give him the benefit of the doubt there poor man), Henry IV I don't know what he thought he was doing I don't no explanation, then the Y-H is Henry 5, again presumably he's writing backwards but I don't know why he spent 200 hours coming up with a logo involving three crosses an infinity symbol and omega oh wait yeah I do know why but moving on, afterward a very neat Henry 6 he tried so hard and it's very elegant and legible. Afterward Edward IV again not clear what happened there. Richard III's starts the next line, again you must love his awfully neat script with those lovely loops. After him his his nephew, then Henry VI who has such interesting script, though arguably legible. And so on :)