England's Civil War tore the country apart for seven years, setting father against son and brother against brother before ending with the execution of King Charles I on a scaffold outside Whitehall. This film traces the conflict from its roots in Charles's clashes with Parliament through the rise of Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army, using battlefield locations, portraits, and expert commentary to lay out how a civil war over taxation and religion became a war over the monarchy itself. It does not stop at the king's death: the film follows Cromwell's forces into Ireland, where the campaign that followed left a legacy of resentment that outlasted the war by centuries. Historians walk through what victory actually bought the Parliamentarians and what it cost everyone else, from soldiers to the Irish population caught in the aftermath. The result is a account of who came out ahead when the fighting stopped, and who did not.