#(edith pargeter in a bloody field by shrewsbury has hal being torn between his loyalty to his distant father and his love for hotspur) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

une-sanz-pluis · 3 months

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So, we know Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester was at Shrewsbury with the 16-year-old Hal (Prince Henry, the future Henry V etc.), whose guardian and governor he was. We know that some point before the 20th, Worcester slipped away from Shrewsbury to join with Henry "Hotspur" Percy in the lead up to his rebellion, bringing with him "a significant proportion of the garrison" and according to Walsingham, perhaps having stolen money and treasures from the Prince.

I sometimes wonder if Worcester had hoped to or tried to abduct Hal to serve as a hostage against Henry - or perhaps hoped to get him to defect to their side.

And can you imagine this poor 16-year-old kid discovering his guardian just abandoned him to join a rebellion against his father and the city's about to be under siege and his dad's nowhere in sight and a lot of the garrison's troops are gone? And he's in charge?

#this is what i talk about when i talk about how spending his adolescence dealing with rebellions and civil wars etc etc affected henry v #even if in this scenario the siege and/or hostage situation never came to anything... like jfc that poor kid #(and yes a 15th century 16 year old would be considered more mature than a modern 16 year old but not that much more mature)#he should have been worrying about pimples and sex not worrying about how to defend a city against a siege led by his own guardian #(edith pargeter in a bloody field by shrewsbury has hal being torn between his loyalty to his distant father and his love for hotspur)#(hotspur in the novel iirc refuses to force hal to decide between the two of them (this after all is a saintly chivalric dreamboat hotspur)#(is there any other kind?)#(and the choice is ultimately made for hal because henry iv's unexpected early arrival prevents hal from having to deal with a siege)#blog #henry v #thomas percy 1st earl of worcester #the battle of shrewsbury

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