# The King Netflix: Henry V's Real History

*Film, TV & Music · Marcus Reed · 2026-10-31*

## TL;DR

Netflix's The King (2019) dramatizes Henry V's rise and the 1415 Battle of Agincourt. It borrows heavily from Shakespeare and compresses or invents characters and events, including Falstaff's role and the Dauphin's death. The film is historical fiction, not a documentary account of Henry V's reign.

## Key facts

- Henry V reigned as King of England from 1413 to 1422, and the film places him squarely in the 15th century.
- The Battle of Agincourt was fought in northern France in 1415, and the English won.
- The character of Sir John Falstaff is fictional, built by Shakespeare on the real Sir John Oldcastle, who was later executed for heresy.
- The Dauphin of France, Louis, died in 1415, but the circumstances in the film differ from the historical record.
- Henry V died in 1422, and chroniclers report a deathbed wish to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

## The King Netflix: When Shakespeare Becomes History

Netflix's *The King* premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2019 and landed on the streaming service on November 1, 2019. Its subject is Henry V, King of England from 1413 to 1422, and the film plants him firmly in the 15th century, on the muddy road toward France. Here is the thing worth knowing before you press play: most of the film's most memorable turns are not drawn from the chronicles. They are drawn from Shakespeare.

That is the whole engine behind the **The King Netflix historical inaccuracies** people keep arguing about online. The movie borrows heavily from Shakespeare's dramatization of Henry V, stitching chronicle history together with invented characters and motifs until the two are hard to separate. Watch it as a Shakespeare adaptation in armor and it holds up beautifully. Watch it as a documentary and the seams start to show.

And the seams are part of the fun. Take the setting itself. In 15th century England, a king who suggested peace with France would have been read as weak, even pathetic. War and rivalry were the whole currency of the medieval game, and Henry was trained for exactly one purpose: to take France. So when the film hands us a reluctant, peace-minded prince who seems to be dragged toward the throne like a twig caught in a strong current, something in the historical record quietly objects.

The historical Henry was no gentle soul. He ran the Agincourt campaign, and he crushed dissent against him with a hard hand. The film's version drifts closer to a 21st century young man with an unusual amount of maturity, which makes for lovely cinema and shaky history. It is the same quiet tension you feel watching any drama that polishes a ruler until the sharp edges disappear.

None of this makes *The King* a bad film. It makes it a beautiful period piece with a Shakespearean spine, and knowing where the drama ends and the record begins is half the pleasure. The rest of the story, the arrow, the friend who never existed, the battle that decided a war, is where things get genuinely strange.

## The Reluctant King Who Wasn't

In the England of the 1400s, a king who talked peace with France was a king who looked weak. War and rivalry were the whole game. So it matters that Henry V was trained for one job in particular: to take France. The Netflix film hands us a different Hal, a brooding young man who never wanted the crown and seems to flinch at the idea of conquest. That is a mischaracterization, and it is one of the biggest **The King Netflix historical inaccuracies** to keep in mind.

Watch the film and you get a prince who feels like a transplant from the twenty-first century, all weary maturity and good intentions. The historical Henry is harder to love. He prosecuted the Agincourt campaign with real appetite, and he dealt with dissent by crushing it hard. A reluctant, peace-inclined ruler is simply not the man the record shows.

Some of the film's family drama is built on shakier ground than it looks. Henry's father, Henry Bolingbroke, was exiled to France by Richard II, then came back to depose the king and seize the throne for himself. The arrow story gets bent too. Henry did take an arrow to the face and somehow lived, but the wound landed at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, not in Ireland. And the idea that the chronicles show no bad blood between father and son does not hold up either. There is substantial evidence of real friction between Prince Hal and Henry IV over policy and money.

Part of the confusion has a famous author behind it. Shakespeare dramatized Henry V and made him a richer, more conflicted character, and the film borrows generously from that version. It is great theater. It is just not quite the king who was trained to conquer France.

## The Friend Who Never Existed: Falstaff, Oldcastle, and the Lie at the Heart of *The King*

Sir John Falstaff, the roguish drinking buddy who anchors so much of *The King*, never drew breath. He is a fictional character, and the man behind him had a very different ending. Shakespeare built the role on Sir John Oldcastle, a real historical figure from a powerful family, then renamed him Falstaff. Netflix kept the invented friendship and quietly dropped the real man's fate.

And that fate matters, because the film's version is not just softened, it is reversed. The historical Oldcastle did not fall at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Condemned as a Lollard heretic, he was hanged and burned at St Giles's Fields in December 1417, two years after the battle, and not by French arrows. He died because he raised a faction against the Catholics, and Henry V's England put him to the fire for it.

So the emotional core of the movie, the king grieving a friend cut down on the field, rests on a character who was never there and a death that happened somewhere else entirely. That is Shakespeare's invention passed down through four centuries, and it is one of the clearest examples of **The King Netflix historical inaccuracies** that a careful viewer will catch.

Fiction Falstaff is invented. Shakespeare renamed the real Sir John Oldcastle to get the character.

1417 Oldcastle was hanged and burned at St Giles's Fields in December 1417, not killed at Agincourt.

There is a shadow of old grudges in how the film frames the French, a faint echo of the persecutors who lit those fires. But the on-screen version trades all of that for a tidy, heartbreaking battlefield goodbye. The real story is stranger and colder: a heretic's execution, ordered in the same years Henry was conquering France, with no tearful farewell in sight.

## The Dauphin's Death and the Jerusalem Deathbed

In the film, the French Dauphin falls on the muddy field at Agincourt. The real Dauphin Louis never stood there. He died in December 1415, weeks after the battle, and the cause appears to have been illness. The poisoning angle floats around in some tellings, but it is reported rather than reliably established, so treat it as a contested detail, not a settled fact.

Then there is Henry's own ending, and this one is stranger than any script. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham records that the dying king, in 1422, spoke of going to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls. The film does gesture at this, slipping in a line about marching on Jerusalem before the credits roll. But the real deathbed promise carries a quiet weight the movie only brushes against: the warrior king of Agincourt, at the very end, talking about masonry in a holy city he would never reach.

Step back and you can feel the current running underneath these choices. The film's gaze tilts toward the English and against the French, with an edge of revenge in the air, as if the burning of the Templars by French hands generations earlier still needs answering. That framing is part of why The King Netflix historical inaccuracies pile up so neatly. The Dauphin becomes a battlefield casualty because the story wants a villain cut down at the moment of triumph. The king becomes a man of peace because the story wants a reluctant hero. History, meanwhile, keeps handing over the messier version: a king who died in his bed in 1422, whispering about Jerusalem, and a Dauphin who slipped away from illness far from any sword.

## Why The King Netflix Historical Inaccuracies Matter

At Agincourt in 1415, the longbow was the decisive weapon. Archers loosed volleys that broke the French cavalry, and the churned, rain-soaked ground did the rest while French commanders made one tactical mistake after another. That part of *The King* holds up. The liberties taken elsewhere are the reason a superb period drama still falls short of top marks for me.

Here is the thing about cinema. It does not just entertain, it quietly rewrites what we think we know. The source makes a sharp point on this: surveys have reportedly shown that many American students believed the United States won the Vietnam War, a picture they absorbed from Hollywood rather than from a history book. If a film can bend a twentieth-century war that far, imagine what it does to a fifteenth-century king most viewers meet for the first time on a screen.

So the distortions in *The King* are not trivia to file away. They are the whole conversation. Henry V, who reigned over England from 1413 to 1422, was trained to take France, and he ruled with an iron hand against anyone who opposed him. The film hands us a reluctant, peace-loving prince instead, and a fictional Falstaff at his side. None of that is a dealbreaker for the drama. It is the reason the drama does not get the highest rating.

> A magnificent period film, absolutely worth recommending. The history is the only thing holding it back.

Watch it for the mud, the arrows, the weight of a crown that never quite fits. Then read a little about the real Henry. The story is better when you know where the screenplay ends and the record begins.


## Frequently asked questions

**What are the main historical inaccuracies in Netflix's The King?**

The 2019 Netflix film The King departs from the record in several clear ways. It paints Henry V as a reluctant, peace-loving ruler, places Sir John Oldcastle at Agincourt, shows the French Dauphin dying in battle, and relocates Henry's famous arrow wound from Shrewsbury in 1403 to Ireland. These are the biggest liberties the drama takes with real history.

**Was Henry V really a reluctant king like in The King?**

No. Henry V, who reigned from 1413 to 1422, was raised and trained to conquer France, and he pursued that goal relentlessly. He also crushed opposition at home with real severity. The film's wistful, hesitant Hal is a dramatic invention, not the historical man who launched the Agincourt campaign.

**Did Sir John Oldcastle die at Agincourt as shown in The King?**

No. The historical Sir John Oldcastle did not fall at Agincourt. Condemned as a heretic, he was hanged and burned at St Giles's Fields in December 1417. The battle took place in 1415, so the film compresses two very different fates into one character who was never there.

**How did the Dauphin of France actually die?**

The Dauphin Louis died in December 1415, apparently of illness, not on the battlefield as the film suggests. As the story goes, some accounts claim he was poisoned, but that detail is not reliably established. What is clear is that he did not die in combat the way The King depicts.

**Did Henry V want to repair walls in Jerusalem?**

Yes. Chroniclers such as Thomas Walsingham report that on his deathbed Henry V spoke of going to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls. It is a strange, haunting last wish for a warrior king, and the film does gesture toward it with a brief reference to marching on Jerusalem.

**Why did Shakespeare create the character Falstaff?**

Falstaff is fictional. Shakespeare originally named the character after the real Sir John Oldcastle, then renamed him Falstaff, likely because Oldcastle's powerful family objected. The King borrows this Shakespearean figure and weaves him into the story, blurring the line between chronicle history and stage drama.

**Was Henry V a peaceful king or a warrior?**

A warrior, plainly. Henry V prosecuted the Agincourt campaign and harshly suppressed dissent at home. The English victory there owed much to massed longbows and arrows, combined with muddy ground and French tactical errors. The peace-loving king of The King is a 21st-century sensibility grafted onto a medieval conqueror.

**What did Henry V really say on his deathbed?**

According to chroniclers like Thomas Walsingham, the dying Henry V spoke of going to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls. He died in 1422, and this reported wish became one of the most quoted details of his final days, a quiet echo in a reign defined by war. Editorial note: Details that remain unconfirmed or debated among historians are presented as such, and the film's dramatized elements should not be read as settled fact.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/the-king-netflix-henry-v-s-real-history/