#my dream study would be to get some trauma and plastic surgeons together with Bradmore's notes and a exact as possible replica of Hal's fac

[themidnightcircusshow]

(starting a new post) Honestly, I've thought much the same about Hal's stoicness and the Shrewsbury wound. We know he was brusque in speech and I've also headcannoned that was a result of the arrow wound. A friend of mine (@richmond-rex) has wondered whether the arrow might have reached his pharynx and affected his speech for a time and as you said, scar tissue could have fucked him up even once he was recovered.

But also, on the more simple side of things, I wonder if it's the fact that it hurt and almost every facial or head movement made it hurt more. And he probably quickly learned that to avoid more pain is to keep his face and head still and avoid making sound. We don't know how long it between Hal's wounding and Bradmore to complete his "cure" and it probably took much longer for the wound to fully heal and longer for Hal to "get back to normal" (I also imagine him struggling to resume eating normally - he's also said to have been abstemious in food and drink).

Yeah, I've always thought the combination of him apparently being quite stoic in his expressions + reportedly not talking very much + being careful with how and what he eats (the only foods I've seen him mentioned as eating are ones that don't require you to open your mouth very wide i.e. oysters and nuts etc) most likely meant that the injury had some lasting effect, either due to lasting chronic pain or physical damage, or both. I once read someone marveling at how lucky he would have had to be not to have suffered nerve damage, and I do imagine that in spite of how careful Bradmore was in treating the wound, the surgical process of having to enlarge the wound slowly probably would have left quite a large scar, even if he seems to have done everything he could to keep it as evenly healed as possible (can't comment on how slowly shrinking the wound would have affected the healing process). I also think he probably would have had some degree of whiplash due to the force of the arrow's impact (though maybe armour would have supported his neck).

I was reading something yesterday about ATLA and how so often people treat scars (especially facial ones) as the be all and end all, without actually putting any thought into what the scar means for the body; how it moves, how it healed, the pain it might carry or even the absence of any sensation at all. I thought it was applicable because I've noticed a lot of the published writing on Henry V, even if it mentions his scar, acts like the scar was the only problem he would have faced after the wound was healed without giving consideration to what probably came with the scar.

#Henry V #have absolutely no idea how to tag this #cw surgery #cw gore #? hopefully that covers it #my dream study would be to get some trauma and plastic surgeons together with Bradmore's notes and a exact as possible replica of Hal's fac #so that they can try and figure out what the scar probably would have looked like and how it may have acted #the only recreation I've seen was of the tool rather than modern surgeons talking about the surgery #honest the absence of the scar in anything contemporary creates a very noticeable gap in how he's talked about #both then and now #like there's people who act like he was the only capable king in his family because he wasn't REALLY disabled like his father or son #or play up his scar in an attempt to Richard III-ise him #it's so interesting about how Hal's disability was most obvious (the very definition of staring you in the face) but also the most ignored #without a doubt only because he kept working through it #but the thing I can never get over is that even the French never mentioned it