How Accurate Is The King (2019)?
Netflix's Henry V, and how much of it comes from Shakespeare rather than from the record
The King is best understood as an adaptation of Shakespeare rather than of history, so its accuracy question is really two questions. The historical spine is genuine: Henry of Monmouth became Henry V of England in 1413, invaded France, besieged Harfleur, won a startling victory at Agincourt on 25 October 1415, and eventually married Catherine of Valois. Those events happened, roughly in that order.
Almost everything that gives the film its character comes from Shakespeare's Henriad, the sequence of Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V, which David Michod's 2019 film compresses into a single narrative. Falstaff is the clearest case. He is Shakespeare's invention, he never existed, and putting him at Agincourt as the architect of the English battle plan is a fiction laid on top of a fiction. Shakespeare himself has Falstaff die before the campaign.
The film also rearranges the record where the drama needs it. Hal does not kill Hotspur in single combat in any reliable account. The Dauphin was at neither Harfleur nor Agincourt and died of dysentery in December 1415. Henry married Catherine on 2 June 1420, nearly five years after the battle, and only after the Treaty of Troyes made him heir to the French crown. And the film's framing, that Henry was pushed into a war he did not want by scheming churchmen and courtiers, sits badly with a king who pursued his claim in France with considerable deliberation.
The real Henry V, briefly
Henry was born around 1386, the son of Henry Bolingbroke, who deposed Richard II in 1399 and reigned as Henry IV. That made the young Henry the heir to a usurped throne, which is the political problem underneath both the plays and the film. He fought for his father against rebellion in Wales and in England, and he took over an increasing share of government during Henry IV's later illness.
He succeeded in 1413 and reopened the English claim in France in 1415, exploiting a French kingdom split between Armagnac and Burgundian factions and headed by Charles VI, whose recurring mental illness made him incapable of ruling. Henry took Harfleur after a costly siege, marched north with a reduced and sick army, and was intercepted near Azincourt in what is now Pas-de-Calais.
The victory did not end the war. It opened a campaign that ran for years and culminated in the Treaty of Troyes of 21 May 1420, which made Henry regent of France and heir to Charles VI, disinherited the Dauphin Charles, and provided for Henry's marriage to Catherine. Henry died in 1422, still short of the French crown, and Charles VI died within two months of him.
What comes from Shakespeare, not from history
Falstaff. Sir John Falstaff is a Shakespearean character. There was no such knight, and the film's version of him, an old soldier who mentors Hal, follows him to France and designs the winning tactics at Agincourt before dying in the battle, is invented twice over. Shakespeare drew loosely on the historical Sir John Oldcastle at first and later renamed the character after pressure from Oldcastle's descendants, and the real Sir John Fastolf is sometimes cited as another partial source, but Falstaff himself belongs to the theatre.
The wild youth. The idea that Prince Hal spent his adolescence in taverns before undergoing a sudden conversion into a serious king is a literary tradition that hardened long before Shakespeare and was then perfected by him. It is not what the record supports. Henry was on campaign in Wales in his teens and involved in the machinery of government well before his accession.
The single combat with Hotspur. The film has Hal kill Henry Percy in a duel. Percy died at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, and the accounts say he was killed by an arrow in the confusion of the melee. Prince Henry did fight in that battle, on the royal side, and was himself struck in the face by an arrow, an injury that left him permanently scarred and that the film does not use. The duel is Shakespeare's staging, kept for the same reason he wrote it.
The reluctant king. The film's Henry is manoeuvred into war by an archbishop and an inner circle, and the tennis balls sent by the Dauphin become the insult that tips him. The tennis ball story appears in Shakespeare and in some chronicle traditions, but it is not securely documented, and the wider portrait is hard to square with a king who spent the first two years of his reign preparing an invasion. The film needs Henry to be manipulated so that the final revelation about the war's origins can land. History supplies no such manipulation.
Some of the courtiers are also reshaped. William Gascoigne, a real Chief Justice who died in 1419, becomes a scheming permanent adviser. The Southampton plot against Henry in 1415, involving Richard, Earl of Cambridge and others, was real, but the film's version of who is behind what is dramatic construction.
Agincourt on screen and Agincourt in the sources
The result is right and the reason is roughly right. A smaller, hungry, dysentery-ridden English army, overwhelmingly composed of archers, destroyed a much larger French force made up disproportionately of the French nobility. The numbers are debated. Older accounts put the English at around six thousand against tens of thousands of French; Anne Curry has argued for a far narrower ratio, on the order of nine thousand English to twelve thousand French, while other historians maintain the gap was much wider. The film gives no figures, which is a defensible choice.
The ground matters and the film changes it. Agincourt was fought on a recently ploughed field, narrowing between two woods, after heavy rain. The mud is the reason the battle went the way it did: French men-at-arms in full plate, funnelled into a shrinking front, sank, fell, and could not get up. The film gives us green and hilly country, and puts the French on the high ground when the English in fact held the better position.
The stakes are missing. English archers drove sharpened wooden stakes into the ground at an angle in front of their positions specifically to break mounted charges, and this was central to how they survived contact. On screen this defence is barely visible, and the battle resolves instead into a long infantry scrum, which is vivid but removes the tactical explanation.
The killing of the prisoners is one of the film's better inclusions in principle, since Henry did order the killing of French prisoners during the battle, sparing the most valuable captives for ransom. Historians disagree about scale and intent, with John Keegan among those arguing that the order was meant to terrify rather than to be carried out completely, and that comparatively few may actually have been killed.
The French dead included a large part of the country's leadership: three dukes, nine counts and thousands of knights and squires by the heralds' count. English losses are much lower in every account, though the range is wide, from double figures in English sources to several hundred in French ones. Edward, Duke of York was among the English dead.
The Dauphin, Catherine, and the ending
The Dauphin. Robert Pattinson's Louis is the film's antagonist, present at Harfleur, taunting Henry, and killed at Agincourt. Louis, Duke of Guyenne, the Dauphin at the time, was at neither siege nor battle. He died in December 1415, some weeks after Agincourt, of dysentery. The French army at Agincourt was commanded not by a royal heir but by the Constable, Charles d'Albret, with the leading Armagnac nobles, because Charles VI's illness ruled him out and the Dauphin was kept away from the field.
Catherine of Valois. The film moves almost straight from the battlefield to the marriage, which compresses five years of continued war into a scene change. Henry and Catherine married on 2 June 1420, after the Treaty of Troyes of 21 May 1420 had already settled the political terms: Henry as regent and heir of France, the Dauphin Charles disinherited, the marriage as the seal on the arrangement. The film's Catherine, who confronts Henry with the truth about the war's pretext, is a modern invention in an old setting.
The ending. Henry V died in 1422, still regent rather than king of France, with Charles VI outliving him by weeks. The son of that marriage, Henry VI, inherited both claims as an infant, and the English position in France unravelled over the following decades. The film stops long before any of this, which is its right, but it means the victory it ends on looks far more final than it was.
Thomas of Lancaster is also relocated. The film kills Henry's brother in Wales before the coronation. Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in fact died at the Battle of Bauge in Anjou in 1421, eight years into Henry's reign.
Frequently asked questions
Is The King based on a true story?
Partly. Henry V, the invasion of France, the siege of Harfleur, the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 and the marriage to Catherine of Valois are all real. But the film adapts Shakespeare's Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V rather than the chronicles, so much of its plot and most of its characterisation comes from the plays.
Was Falstaff a real person?
No. Falstaff is Shakespeare's invention. He never existed, and he certainly was not present at Agincourt or responsible for the English battle plan. Shakespeare based an early version of the character loosely on Sir John Oldcastle and later renamed him, and the real Sir John Fastolf is sometimes suggested as another partial inspiration.
Did Henry V kill Hotspur in single combat?
No. Henry Percy, called Hotspur, was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, struck by an arrow during the fighting. The future Henry V fought in that battle and was himself hit in the face by an arrow. The duel between the two is Shakespeare's dramatic invention, carried over into the film.
Did the Dauphin die at Agincourt?
No. Louis, Duke of Guyenne, the Dauphin, was present at neither Harfleur nor Agincourt, and he died of dysentery in December 1415, weeks after the battle. The French army at Agincourt was commanded by the Constable, Charles d'Albret, and the leading Armagnac nobles.
Did Henry V marry Catherine of Valois straight after Agincourt?
No. The war continued for years. The Treaty of Troyes was signed on 21 May 1420, making Henry regent and heir to Charles VI and disinheriting the Dauphin Charles, and Henry married Catherine on 2 June 1420, nearly five years after the battle.
How accurate is the film's Battle of Agincourt?
The outcome is right and the mismatch in numbers is broadly right, but the staging is not. The real battle was fought on a muddy ploughed field narrowing between woods, the English held the better ground rather than the French, and the archers' line of sharpened stakes, which broke the French cavalry, is nearly absent from the film.
Further reading
1. Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England — Juliet Barker (2007)
Agincourt was won by an army of ordinary archers and a meticulously organised campaign, not by the chivalric heroics the legend remembers.
The fullest popular account of the campaign, the battle and the logistics behind it, which is exactly the material the film replaces with Falstaff.
Pick this if: Readers who want the battle itself in detail. (Level: Beginner)
2. 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory — Ian Mortimer (2009)
Reconstructed day by day, 1415 shows a calculating and ruthless king rather than the patriotic hero of the plays.
Mortimer's day-by-day method makes it obvious how much preparation went into a war the film presents as reluctantly entered.
Pick this if: Readers who want the year in close focus. (Level: Intermediate)
3. Henry V — Christopher Allmand (1997)
Henry V's reputation rests on administration, law and finance as much as on Agincourt, and his French project was a serious state undertaking.
The standard scholarly biography, for readers who want the king assessed on the record rather than through the Henriad.
Pick this if: Readers who want the academic account. (Level: Advanced)
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Related guides
Sources consulted
- Wikipedia, 'The King (2019 film)'
- Wikipedia, 'Battle of Agincourt'
- Wikipedia, 'Treaty of Troyes'
- Wikipedia, 'Battle of Shrewsbury'
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