King Charles: Don’t Mention the (Hundred Years’) War

By Andrew Stuttaford

Sunday, February 02, 2025

 

Henry V did make a speech before the battle of Agincourt, but Shakespeare undoubtedly improved on it, ending it as follows:

 

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

 

Agincourt was still feted, at least while I was at school, as one of the great battles of English history (and there were so many to choose from). Plucky, outnumbered bowmen routed a larger French army. Further humiliation of the enemy ensued.

 

The consciously mythic Laurence Olivier version of Henry V (1944) was filmed as a wartime morale booster and partly funded by the British government. No one seemed to mind (in England) that in the year of D-Day this epic celebrated a crushing victory over their French foes BFFs. That said, Shakespeare’s text was doctored here and there to remove some moments in which Henry behaved less than gloriously. No need to dwell on a prisoner massacre (albeit one in retaliation for an earlier French atrocity) or include some of Henry’s more violent speeches.

 

Over the years, the Royal Navy has had a number of HMS Agincourts, and there was due to be another, a nuclear-powered submarine, but the name, announced in 2018, has been changed, from Agincourt to Achilles. The monarch has the final word on the naming of the navy’s vessel, and the late Queen Elizabeth had signed off on it.

 

So why the change?

 

The BBC:

 

King Charles was involved in a decision to change the name of a new royal submarine from HMS Agincourt to HMS Achilles, a move that was branded “woke nonsense” by former defence secretary Grant Shapps, the BBC has been told.

 

The name change . . . followed reports of concern within the Ministry of Defence that the original name for the vessel may have offended the French.

 

Charles (who is said to have personally intervened in this matter) should have known better, and he should have known the French — who tend not to think much of countries that renounce past glories — better. But then one of Charles’s more striking characteristics is the way his ignorance is amplified by the high opinion he has always held of his own abilities, not least, it seems (who knew?), as a military strategist. Previously confidential papers released this year under Britain’s 40-year-rule show Charles questioning Mrs. Thatcher’s nuclear defense strategy at a very dangerous time in the Cold War.

 

Of course he did. Ignorance has never gotten in the way of Charles giving his opinion and nor has constitutional convention. He has frequently appeared unwilling or unable to understand what his job — whether as monarch or monarch in waiting — entails, which is, for the most part, being a “living flag.” Elizabeth II, as queen, would have been well within her rights to (privately) pass on her thoughts to Thatcher on the country’s nuclear strategy, but her son’s meddling crossed a line. Ministers seem to have been so worried by Charles’s concerns that he was given far more of a briefing on this topic than was appropriate. Their only response should have been to tell him that, if he felt so strongly about this issue, he should renounce his right to succeed his mother and go into politics instead. That’s not something Charles would ever have done. Hard work, people arguing back and all that.

 

A new story suggests that Charles’s disdain for constitutional convention may not have stopped since he became king. The British economy has already been badly hurt by the “race” to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The responsibility for that is shared by all the country’s major parties, but, despite clear evidence of the damage that net zero was already doing, Labour’s energy and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband, a millenarian fanatic, has, since taking office in July, picked up the pace at which Britain is running it, with results that may well be catastrophic.

 

Reportedly this doesn’t worry Charles, a green neo-feudalist with, not that he would say it aloud, no fondness for the social mobility that economic growth tends to encourage.

 

The Daily Mail:

 

The environmentally conscious monarch is said to ‘love’ Mr Miliband’s efforts to make the UK greener.

 

The Times today reported that the King had praised Mr Miliband and his work to another senior Labour figure . . . Charles’s environmentalism is well-known. Last November, Mr Miliband was among ministers, campaigners and business leaders who attended an international sustainability reception he hosted at Buckingham Palace.

 

To be fair, Charles is, as noted above, within his rights to intervene in the naming of the Royal Navy’s ships, something that remains a royal prerogative, but the way that he has exercised it on this occasion is yet another reminder of his appalling judgment.

 

I wonder how he would have reacted if it had been suggested that the sub be named after Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, which was sunk by French agents in 1985 (one person aboard was killed). It had been about to set off from New Zealand to protest a planned French nuclear test in the South Pacific.