“History, however, is not a congeniality contest. How we rate Henry for likability today is of little consequence. What matters is what he did in his own time, how he optimized for the standards of his own age, and what the consequences were of his relatively short life and reign.This is a more straightforward assessment to make. In his day, the weight of opinion was that Henry was somewhere close to the paragon of kingship, measured both by his personal bearing and by his political and military achievements.”