Strength: 2
Type: Melee Unit
Flavor Text: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; He that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; From this day to the ending of the world."
Flavor Source: William Shakespeare, Henry V
Artwork: Portrait of a Man in Armor by Titan (1567)
About the card:
The flavor text of this card is from the St. Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare's Henry V. The play chronicles the life and times of the English King Henry V and his exploits in the Hundred Years War against France. The English Kings claimed the French throne as their own, but were mostly fighting the war in order to maintain their French holdings in Normandy and Aquitaine. As in many feudal societies, the kings of one country could be dukes or counts in another making their allegiances multifaceted and suspect by the reigning kings and nobles in countries where they held lesser titles. For this reason the French kings wished to expel the English monarchs and stop them from interfering in their country and the Hundred Years War allowed them to do so.
By the early 1400's many of the gains the English had made in the previous five decades had eroded, so Henry V the newly crowned king went to war. Shakespeare's play is concluded at the battle of Agincourt where the English longbow men decimated the French heavy cavalry and supposedly King Henry V gave the St. Crispin's Day speech to rouse his troops for the battle. After the battle, Henry was welcomed home as a hero and thought that victory over the French was assured. Ending the play here is probably a good idea if your protagonist is the English King as the next forty years would be marred by defeat at the hands of the Charles VII and Joan of Arc (see also Pyre).
If you want to see the play, I highly recommend the 1989 film release as it is one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare to the silver screen. Instead of transposing the time period and theme as many Hollywood adaptations do (for example Richard III (1995) was set in WWII, or Titus (1999) was set in 1920's Italy, or Romeo and Juliet (1996) was set in 1990's L.A.), Henry V is set in the time and place in which it was written. However, I would read up on some English history before watching, as the movie is hard to follow without knowing the main plot and characters since the dialogue is in the original Elizabethan English.
