Warrior King The Life of Henry V Author:Keith Dockray The wild and headstrong prince of William Shakespeare's "Henry IV", blossoms in "Henry V", into a veritable hero-king: an epic embodiment of military valour, serious-minded, and, above all, an archetypal man of action. Such a portrayal reflected not only Shakespeare's Tudor sources but contemporary estimates of "Henry V". For his earliest Englis... more »h biographer, a royal chaplain and well-informed insider, he was a model Christian prince, clearly carrying out God's wishes both at home and abroad; the chronicler Thomas Walsingham, writing soon after the king's death in 1422, judged him a pious, prudent, distinguished and warlike ruler; and, for the humanist Tito Livio in about 1437, he was an energetic, just and shrewd military commander who, at Agincourt, fought 'like an unvanquished lion'. Modern historians have perpetuated the flattery of chroniclers but should they? Was the real Henry V a national hero, a jingoistic bigot, or neither?« less