The Dauphin Louis in Michôd's Film on Agincourt and the Prince's Real Fate

One of the principal figures of the Battle of Agincourt in David Michôd's film is the Dauphin of France, Louis, played by Robert Pattinson: caricatured, arrogant, dim-witted, even vicious, absurd and clumsy, with a dreadful accent, and thank heavens at least not deformed. This, too, is a find of Shakespeare's, made chiefly with the aim of mocking French haughtiness. In reality the prince, then still only 18, was not there at all, and with his frail health could hardly have fought in any case. The Dauphin died peacefully a couple of months after the battle. Why, then, mock so cruelly a pious youth, showing him splashing noisily into the mud in heavy, gleaming armour? It put one more in mind of Monty Python's "Holy Grail" than of a film based on real historical events. Then again, the Archbishop of Canterbury was never at Agincourt either, and had it not been for Shakespeare, we might know him as a peacemaker who insisted on reconciling the English with the French.