Regan

Family: Lear's family · Role: second daughter · First appears: King Lear · Act I, Scene I

As King Lear’s second daughter, Regan is named among the younger rulers when he divides the kingdom and grants her and Cornwall a hereditary third. In the opening scene, she discusses shared concerns with Goneril and questions Cordelia’s declaration of love for their father, while her marriage to Cornwall places her alongside him in the new order.

In Act II, Regan insists that Kent be put in the stocks and refuses to house King Lear unless he dismisses most of his followers; she and Goneril ultimately offer him no accommodation for his train. Though Gloucester is initially treated as a good friend and counselor, Regan later joins Cornwall in seizing and binding him, kills the First Servant who resists, and orders Gloucester expelled toward Dover after his blinding: “Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell / His way to Dover.”

After Cornwall’s death, Regan presents Edmund as a more suitable husband for herself, saying, “Edmund and I have talk’d, / And more convenient is he for my hand / Than for your lady’s.” She and Goneril become rivals for Edmund, who has pledged love to both; at the end, Goneril poisons Regan and then dies by suicide.