Henry V took an arrow through the face at sixteen and spent weeks having it surgically extracted. The scar he carried for life marked a king far more complex and ruthless than Shakespeare’s heroic warrior. He won Agincourt against impossible odds, conquered Normandy, and was on the verge of uniting England and France when dysentery killed him at thirty-five.

This episode traces Henry from his wild youth and facial wound through the Agincourt campaign, the Treaty of Troyes, and the death that unraveled everything he had built.

• He was struck in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury at age sixteen and survived
• He defeated a French army several times larger than his own at Agincourt in 1415
• The Treaty of Troyes named him heir to the French throne, uniting the two kingdoms
• He died of dysentery at thirty-five, just two months before he would have become King of France