Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- What does it mean to be a good king? Dominating the battlefield with your Thor-like upper body strength and your magnetic personality? Communicating well and uniting people to follow you? Making wise policy decisions?
- Whatever it means to be a good king, will Henry VI be up to the task? What kinds of skills and personal traits is he supposed to be cultivating? Which posters should be hanging on his wall—Aragorn? Odin? Somebody else?
- What does it mean for a woman to lead in this time and place, like Joan of Arc? She's pretty kick-butt on the battlefield, and she gives awesome speeches. She seems to be succeeding where the men of the French aristocracy failed. But will the assumptions of her time make it hard for her to succeed as a military leader?
- How does loyalty work in this play? How important is it, and what happens when a person is faced with conflicting loyalties? What if your loyalty to comrades in battle is at odds with your loyalty to the land and people you love (like for Burgundy, who has fought side by side with the English lords but cares about the landscape and people of France)?
- How much does patriotism matter? Is it worth giving your life for your country? How about your soul?
- How do you know what patriotism is, anyway? Is it loyalty to the land itself? To its people? To your king? What if your king's grandfather totally shoved the rightful heir off the throne, and you find out he still has relatives who might also be king material? Is that like letting Denethor be king when Aragorn has returned?
- How does the supernatural affect the human world in this play? Is Joan getting her power from God, like the French say, or from demons scarier than anything out of Supernatural? Both sides hope God is favoring them, but is there any evidence this is true?