*brings unholy amounts of popcorn* please tell me your thoughts on Henry's relationship with fatherhood
I feel the need to preface this with a disclaimer that this isn't a historical argument about the real Henry and this isn't about the Shakespearean Henry. It's my thoughts around the Henry I've constructed, my fictional Henry. IMHO, I think it fits with the evidence we have but the evidence is so limited you could do a thousand different things with it and still be "historically accurate".
Secondly, i HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS!
I literally wrote a thousand words and started over because it was too focused on Henry's relationship with Hal and I guess it's one of Henry's most important relationships as a father, if not the most important, but also it's far from the only relationship Henry has. So if you want more thoughts on anything, hit me up.
OK, SO.
Henry is a bad father. I think he damages his sons more than his daughters but that's largely because Blanche and Philippa leave England and leave him as preteens, the boys had to live with him until his death. I think Henry emotionally abuses Hal. I don't think he does it from a place of intentional cruelty but that he parents in much the same way that he was parented. I think the utter tragedy of his life is that he genuinely doesn't realise what he's doing to Hal and when he does realise there might be something horrifically wrong with his relationship with Hal (i.e. the dagger incident) he's too old and too sick and too beholden to his allies/favourites to do anything about it.
I don't think Henry is a two-dimensional, utterly unsympathetic villain who conforms to all the comfort stereotypes about abusers and bad parents. Of course, that doesn't make what he does okay.
I debated with myself whether Henry sees his sons as objects or subjects. I think he sees them as primarily extensions of himself, not necessarily people in their own right (especially true in Hal's case), but doesn't really understand why they don't act in ways he thinks they should. In the end, I decided he sees them as disobedient objects.
Humphrey is the baby of the family and is treated as such. Henry infantilises him in his refusal to give Humphrey any responsibilities and titles that would allow him to build up his own affinity or give him the same kind of apprenticeship in leadership, diplomacy and arms that his brothers got. Humphrey is spoilt - he gets everything he wants except his independence - and kept dependent on Henry. But he also doesn't see enough of Henry to benefit from seeing Henry handling the business of kingship.
John is the classic middle child. He's overlooked, overworked and underappreciated. He has the same responsibilities as his older brothers, complete with the same problems, but without the benefits of rank (he doesn't become a duke until Henry dies) or much thanks. Henry's primary interest in John is the ways he can be of use to Henry rather than as an individual - the idea of John as a person, rather than an extension of Henry, is pretty strange to Henry. While they have a pretty bad relationship, John probably escapes with the least amount of harm because of this lack of scrutiny. He's able to have a life for himself away from Henry. He isn't kept dependent like Humphrey, he isn't spoilt like Thomas and he isn't subject to Henry's hyper-criticisms like Hal.
Thomas is the favourite. Henry has nearly always seen Thomas as the person Henry wished he was. Thomas is brave, fearless and brash, utterly confident in himself - everything that Henry wishes he was. Whereas Mary tried to temper Thomas's recklessness, Henry encouraged it to Thomas's detriment. Henry has Thomas raised to embody and favour the ideals of chivalry but, at the same time, spoils him - neither John nor Hal would ever get away with abandoning their post like Thomas does. This favouritism doesn't mean Henry goes along with everything Thomas wants: when Thomas disagrees with Henry, he's dismissed and viewed suspiciously. More particularly, Henry raises Thomas as the favoured child that Hal is constantly compared to and found lacking. He constantly pits Thomas against Hal, forcing them into a rivalry that damages their relationship and also damages the both of them.
Hal is the heir. To Henry, he is the most literal, most real extension of himself because Hal has his name and will, god willing, succeed him (whether we're talking succeeding to the dukedom of Lancaster or succeeding to the throne of England) and continue the dynasty, hopefully improving it but at the very least maintaining it. So Hal carries the weight of expectations and the locus of his anxieties. He's the most disobedient of Henry's disobedient objects. Firstly, because nothing he could do or be would ever allow him to measure up to Henry's standards because Henry's standards are always shifting and changing. I kinda gestured at this in Henry's POV of the dagger incident: Henry hated Hal's childhood shyness and now he hates Hal's adult confidence and wishes Hal was back to being meek and shy. Secondly, because, as an adult, Hal has developed a will and sense of identity that isn't easily denied by Henry. Hal bears the brunt of Henry's focus and the one that's criticised the most, at times bullied and humiliated by Henry in the guise of "bettering" him.
These roles aren't static. If Hal died, Henry would start reassessing Thomas - he wouldn't be as critical of him as he is of Hal, but there would be a sense that Thomas needs correction. If Thomas started going against Henry, Henry would start putting John in opposition to Thomas (whether or not he'd be successful would probably depend on how much John wants Henry's attention and approval and who John feels the most loyalty towards). If John proved difficult to manage, Henry would move onto Humphrey. If Hal could be made to step into a more subservient position, Henry might even side with Hal against a rebellious Thomas.
Henry's disinterest in his younger sons' lives should not be confused with tacit approval. They get away with a lot more than both Hal and Thomas because they're not subject to Henry's scrutiny to the same degree but if Henry heard about some misbehaviour of theirs, there would be hell to pay.
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Henry parents in much the same way that he was parented and his relationship with Hal is a mirror to his relationship with his father.
I think the first eighteen months or so of Henry's life were pretty good. Both John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster had their own issues with parenthood but they were decent parents. Then, Blanche died and in his grief, Gaunt became cold, distant and severe. He was a demanding father whose interactions with his children were marked by his disapproval and criticism. Gaunt was like that with all his children (except the Beauforts - maybe) but Henry was constantly told that he'd be the ruin of their house, that he would fail to live up to Gaunt's hopes and standards, that the values that were so well embodied by Henry's grandfather, Henry of Grosmont, would be lost. So Henry grew up believing that there was something gravely wrong with him, that he was a constant disappointment to his father, that he would ruin his dynasty, and that love was always conditional. Most of these he passed onto Hal. His idea of what it meant to be a father was to to criticise and try to "fix" the faults in one's children. These are the lessons he enacts when it comes to Hal.
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Mary was the one person who Henry believed loved him unconditionally when they were growing up. Henry believed that children come out the womb loving their parents unconditionally. He gets jealous of Mary for the ready love their children show her. He gets jealous of their children because they're loved by Mary. He doesn't say anything but he believes Mary loves him less than she loves their children. He carries that silent resentment with him long after her death.
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I'm trying not retread the fics I wrote about Hal's birth and the sequel about Thomas's birth too much. While there are things I would change about them now, the basic premise would remain the same and the issues these fics raise about Hal's birth and infancy add onto Henry's issues with fatherhood in general. Henry has an idealistic, almost utopian view of what life would look like with Mary as his wife. They have made a child and the child would love him just as unconditionally as Mary does and they would make their own little world together. It's not a coincidence that these dreams occur around the same time as Gaunt's departure for Castile.
Then, Hal comes early and Henry's idealistic view is shattered by the reality. There's also anxieties around Hal being a small, slightly premature baby that Henry catastrophizes about
Henry also, subconsciously, sees Hal being sickly baby as something he is responsible for. IIRC, there's a medieval medical belief that it's the father whose "matter" shapes the baby the most so from a medical perspective, Hal's frailty is the result of Henry's own frailty. There is also the idea that, like, as Henry's heir, Hal will be one day be Henry. That Hal is Henry's legacy to his dynasty. For a guy with a lot of self-loathing and feeling he'll never live up to his father's ideals, Hal is a reflection of everything he hates about himself and another reason while his father will be disappointed in him. All of this could have probably been summed up as "Henry has post-partum depression and anxiety which fed and was fed by his self-loathing" but then, no one should ever expect me to be succinct.
Whenever there's a suggestion of Hal being weak, Henry retreats and worries. So he doesn't bond with Hal and Hal just gives back what Henry gives him, which Henry then takes personally. He has a very set idea of how his son should be acting towards and Hal is failing that standard. He's not reacting with joy when Henry makes an approach, he's cautious, almost scared, and Henry takes it as a rejection and a failure.
Thomas is a much easier baby because Mary's labour and the birth occur when Henry's away, and because he's a full-term baby. His birth also coincides with Henry finally starting to bond with Hal. Things start to look good. John is born a couple of years later. Then, John of Gaunt comes home.
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Henry genuinely sees himself trying to protect Hal from Gaunt. He figures that since Gaunt is likely to judge Hal the same way as he judged Henry, he's going to try and spare Hal that. His solution? Why, he's going to make sure Gaunt has nothing to criticise. So he picks incessantly on Hal's behaviour in order to make him "perfect". In other words, in trying to spare Hal Gaunt's disapproval and torment, he does to Hal exactly what Gaunt did to him.
I think one of the reasons Hal is able to have more... functional relationships than Henry is because he has Mary as a source of unconditional love for the first seven years of his life. I think it also helps that he is able to form tight bonds with his brothers (given how gender-segregated medieval society was and the age differences between them, I suspect that neither Henry nor Hal had particularly close relationships with their sisters). I think Hal did have a series of father figures - Peter Melbourne, Richard II, Hotspur, Oldcastle - that also helped. I think that talking to Richard Courtenay, another a member of Children of Shitty Dads Society, also helped.
I don't mean this is in the sense that "Hal had it better, Henry had it worse" - that sort of line of thinking just gets us to the stage of negating trauma because "someone has it worse". And there are ways in which I think the opposite was true - Hal feels, very keenly, the difference between how his father treats him versus his other siblings, especially Thomas, whereas Henry knew Gaunt treated everyone the same way he treated Henry (it didn't make it any easier of course). I think Gaunt was, financially, more indulgent than Henry was but that isn't necessarily Henry's fault.
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I feel like I should talk about Henry's relationship with his daughters and the truth is I just don't know. I can see an argument that Henry's awkward hang-ups around his masculinity meant that he was a better father to his daughters than he was to his sons. The evidence of his relationship with Blanche and Philippa is so limited that it's difficult to come to a conclusion but the vibe I get from that evidence doesn't really support the idea that Henry was really involved with his daughters.
I know I said I wasn't going to make a historical argument but I feel like I have to talk about the historical evidence here.
Blanche and Philippa appear to have been well-educated but not exceptionally so. As Kim Phillips points out, they were the youngest medieval English princesses to be married off (Blanche, at 10, was the youngest and the only princess to marry below canonical age). Phillips says their youth was due to Henry needing to shore up his precarious position as king. But it meant that Henry never saw them again. The letter he wrote when Blanche died is fairly generic in what it says and the one letter I've seen that he wrote to Philippa is diplomatic and impersonal.
It's not enough to put together a picture from. The impersonal, generic letter of condolence might hide his real grief at her death rather than revealing his true feelings. The diplomatic letters are diplomatic - I don't expect the letter Philippa wrote to Hal would be personal, either. While Blanche and Philippa's ages at their marriages were young, they were older than Isabelle de Valois and unremarkable in comparison to the wider English aristocracy.
I don't think Henry was the sort of cliched "daughters are pawns for marriage alliances" medieval dad. But at the same time, the vibe I get from this limited evidence is similar to how he treats his sons. Whatever he thinks of his children, he always seems to put them to use in ways that serve his needs and desires but is not necessarily conducive to their wellbeing. I doubt he really intended or believed Blanche would be at risk but she was.
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Henry doesn't know that Hal is queer - I think he probably senses there's something about Hal that's like Richard but he doesn't actually know (at least, not in the canon period - a modern AU would be different). But it's something that's another division between them because Henry is quite homophobic and it's another reminder of Richard.
Hal reminds Henry of Richard and Mary and Henry hates and loves it because these are people he loved returned again in his son. But he hates Richard too and Hal reminds him of the things he hated about Richard. And Hal isn't Mary nor is he Richard but an imperfect copy of them.
At least, that's what he's like to Henry. In reality, Hal is Hal.
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If Henry ever got to the stage where he could understand what he did to Hal, if he could ever name it as emotional abuse, he would be horrified.
(I don't think he would ever come to that understanding in canon period. He would only have that realisation in a verse where Mary lived and after he went to therapy. I don't mean that Joan of Navarre would excuse or enable or ignore what Henry di) but that he wouldn't be receptive to her. He would shut down any gentle or not so gentle criticism of his parenting, telling Joan that she's not Hal's mother, that she hardly knows him and she can't tell him what to do with his son. He does a similar thing to Mary when she calls him out on it in the fic about Humphrey's birth. Which is why I say he needs Mary and therapy. He needs enough therapy that he'd be receptive to hearing that from Mary.)
He'd be horrified not just because of what he's done to Hal but because it meant he was abused by his father.
