Appearance and reality

Henry V, in English myth, is the ideal Englishman: plucky and persevering, austere and audacious, cool-headed, stiff-lipped and effortlessly superior: 'simply the greatest man,' as my generation of undergraduates learned, 'ever to rule England'. Elizabethan dramatists boosted the image. With a bit of help from deluded historians and mythopoeic film-makers, Shakespeare turned Henry into a box-office hero and a romantic lead. The myth became more important than the man - just as well, for those who like their past to be comforting or inspiring. The reality, stripped out of the myth, is vicious and dispiriting.

Entombed in Westminster Abbey, Henry presents himself as he wanted us to remember him: a pious king, almost a saintly one, buried above Edward the Confessor, in a unique space, exclusively dedicated to the cult of the king's soul. A true king, crowned by God. A warrior-king, helmed and mounted. A chivalrous king, riding into history in hallowed company. Swan-badges allude, by a Latin pun, - signo, 'by a sign' echoes cygno, 'by a swan' - to a vision of the cross: 'by this sign, conquer!' Yet Henry's kingship was tainted. His usurping dynasty had no right to the crown. His victories were triumphs of hype, stained by the blood of war-crimes. His piety was remarkable, especially in zeal for burning heretics, but a saint he ain't.

The ugly prince, kissed by history, becomes a beautiful legend.

After Henry's death, English propaganda constructed an even more elaborate legend: of his self-transformation, after a reckless youth, into a model of responsibility. For the conversion of royal sinner into royal saint - the tale of how 'Madcap Prince Hal' became 'Harry the Great' - there is no scrap of contemporary evidence. Yet the English love it as an antidote to the despair their royal heirs generally provoke. For it's a tough job, being Prince of Wales, with no role, except to wait. Princes try to find ways of keeping busy - as soldiers or statesmen, playboys or politicians, grumblers or gardeners, leaders or liabilities - but generational conflicts, PR blunders and intolerable frustrations always seem to get in their way. It's a comfort to be able to turn to Henry V as an example of how the tearaway can turn regal, the rebel can become reliable. Whenever Farmer George's Black Sheep went astray, when Victoria's heir flirted with actresses or George V's with fascists, when Prince Charles got spattered with scandal or derision, the English could think reassuringly of Henry V. The ugly prince, kissed by history, becomes a beautiful legend.

Henry's spell of alleged laddishness was a short episode when he was a de-mobbed soldier, twenty years old, with wild oats to sow. Supposedly, he spent time and money in taverns and brothels, in drunken brawls and sordid liaisons, with unsuitable playmates. 'He exercised meanly,' said a late but influential chronicle, ' the feats of Venus and Mars and other pastimes of youth.' The stories are plausible but untrue - part of an imaginative reconstruction of Henry's life which his brother later paid a hack to write up. The models are saintly conversion-narratives: St Augustine's, from an unchaste life, or St Paul's, from wickedness to apostleship, or St Thomas Becket's, from a wastrel 'suddenly changed into a new man'. Adolescent excess was an excusable background against which a born-again do-gooder could shine more effulgently with - in the words Shakespeare put into Hal's mouth - a 'reformation glittering o'er my fault'.