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As it always did, History was to make its judgement upon her. Witch, they would call her, thankless and evil and depraved.
But, as it often was to those who were beyond offering their own defense, History was wrong.
For, above all else, Goneril loved her father.
She loved him when she was a child, when he would play with her sister and her in the garden, catching a glimpse of the part of him that she was certain loved her back, just as much as she loved him.
She loved him at her mother’s funeral, when she and Regan stood shivering at the graveside, watching their mother’s coffin disappear into the mud, small arms wrapped around one another for there was only room in their father’s for the infant Cordelia.
She loved him even as she hid from him up in her bedroom, buried under the covers with her eyes tight shut and her mind anywhere else, she and Regan sitting back-to-back, waiting out the tempest that was their father’s wrath—since they did not know how it came upon him, there seemed to be nothing to do that would placate him, other than hide.
She loved her father through it all, but it often seemed he only returned the sentiment when she did as she was told.
So she did.
She was the eldest, and she acted as such: the model daughter, they called her, devoted to her father and her kingdom and her royal station. While Regan complained and Cordelia procrastinated, Goneril’s courtship was easy and brief. She gave her body and half her heart to the first man who asked it of her—for her youngest sister indeed spoke true: a husband’s love halved the duty she bore to her father—without truly knowing if it was love that she surrendered herself to.
But Albany’s love, ill-defined and poorly reciprocated as it may be, was nothing like her father’s. His love was love without fear. He told her how he felt, what part she had in such feelings without her having to second-guess her every action, watch his face for minute signs of a shift, tense after an innocuous-seeming remark for fear of unwarranted retribution.
Albany’s anger, when it did appear, was the shy snap back of a whipped dog, rather than the all-consuming, uncaring storm of her father’s. She no longer walked through her halls with a tensed back, a waiting ear, and dread heavy in her chest, for her husband gave her no reason to do so.
She had carried a dagger in her skirts since childhood, and she gripped the hilt whenever she felt herself seized by fear, and it was only marrying Albany that made her consider laying it aside.
But even so, she still loved her father.
***
The years wore on. Goneril grew older. Regan was married to a man who suited her, and Cordelia rejected a seemingly never-ending string of suitors with her father’s indulgent permission.
The relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Albany grew fraught. Their marriage dragged on, and her womb remained empty. Albany never blamed her, just sighed every time she reported the failing and continued on. She feared him, feared what he could do to her, at first but not for long. Once she was no longer afraid of his retaliation, Goneril realized how ill-matched they were to one another. Their philosophies on life were vastly different—his borne of literature and hers of necessity—and they clashed sharply and often. Though she had all but forgotten the dagger in her skirts, they traded verbal blows in exchange for the physical they both knew enough not to fear, and often could hardly stand to be in the same country as one another, let alone under the same roof.
But even so, Goneril endured, because what choice did she have? And, though she had begun to think of herself as the Duchess of Albany first and the eldest daughter of the King second, she still loved her father.
When she received his summons, there was no doubt in her mind that she would heed them. Albany accompanied her, albeit grudgingly, to her childhood home. He had not wished to come, had complained and whined that Cornwall did not like him—this was, objectively, true— until they had broken into a shouting match and Goneril had shattered into tears and all but begged him to come so she did not have to face her family alone.
She loved her father when she saw him again, and glowed for a moment with pride for the brief moment that his attention was focused on no one but her.
And then he told her to tell him that she loved him.
And it was with complete honesty that she stammered through an answer, “Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor. A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.”
For it was true, she reflected. She loved him as much as any child had ever loved their parent, had given her liberty and her youth to him, a devouring attachment that she struggled to put into words.
He conferred half his kingdom upon her, and she agreed to the terms, the strings that came with it—there were always terms and strings—because what other choice would she have? That which was given to her could easily be taken away by a man with the authority of the King.
She had done as she was told, and been rewarded for it.
So why, she wondered as she watched Cordelia led away by her new husband, eyes shimmering with barely-unshed tears when she looked back at her father’s stonecarved face, did she feel so hollow?
***
Goneril had always been able to shake off the doubt, shake off the resentment, but there was something different about this time. This time, the hollow feeling persisted. It persisted when she and Albany moved into their new home, took on their roles as the leaders of half of England. It persisted when she and her husband decided that it might be best simply to not speak to one another. It persisted when she welcomed her father and his hundred knights into her home.
He put his arms around her, proclaimed that he loved her best, as she was his eldest. His favorite daughter, he called her, loyal, and loving, and perfect.
A year ago, her heart would have pounded itself to death against her ribcage if she had received such praise. She would have embraced her father back and never let him go, would have sobbed into his shoulder at the confirmation of what she had known to be true her whole life. But her heart reflected back the hollow feeling into his words, and her arms remained by her sides. She let her eyes drift over his shoulder, somewhere beyond him, and murmured that she lived only to do his will. She called him ‘my lord’, rather than ‘Father.’
Though he had just told her that he did, Goneril was uncertain that her Father loved her as she loved him.
But worse was the thought that came after that. For the first time in her life, she questioned whether or not she loved her father.
This feeling was awful, terrifying, and, ordinarily, she would have spoken to her husband about it. He would have listened quietly, and they would have talked late into the night. He would have helped her speak to her Father, salvage the love that was there once. But she and Albany were not speaking, so she simply slunk away to her chambers, and watched her father’s knights destroy the home she had built from a safe, faraway vantage point.
Her certainty in her love for her father did not return, and the decision to send Oswald to turn away half the knights was not a difficult one.
When her father raged against her decision, she did not hide in her chambers. The Duchess of Albany went down to meet him. Her husband stood by her side, not touching, but steadfast nonetheless. It was his presence that allowed her to remain impassive as her father’s fury crashed against her like water breaking on rock. She had expected it, she told herself; she had prepared herself for it. Her face remained impassive, but her fruitless womb smarted with her father’s curse even as she did not react to his calling her thankless and a creature, renouncing her as he had her youngest sister.
Her face remained impassive until he and his entourage had stormed from her house, and then she turned her face away from her husband’s questioning eyes, all but fled from the room so he would not see her weep.
***
She went to visit her sister. She knew her father was coming to her next, and Regan was not strong enough to endure him, certainly not alone.
She had not spoken to Albany since her father’s rejection of her, but she had no need to do so. By the time she arrived to take her sister’s hand and part, she already knew: Goneril no longer loved her father.
She told herself that she had accepted this, that love was as simple as Cordelia had characterized it: if her father did not love her, she would not love him in return. She clung to this as her father cursed her and Regan, compared their love for him in an attempt to turn them against one another. Regan’s hand only squeezed hers tighter.
His flight into the storm was no one’s fault but his own, and it did solve their problem: his survival would be the province of Nature. She told Regan this afterwards, huddled inside by the roaring fire in the hearth and she declared that the tears she wept as the rain pounded against the walls that protected them were borne of rage.
She no longer loved her father. If she simply continued to tell herself that, she might one day believe it to be true.
***
Of one thing she was certain: Goneril did not love Edmund.
Edmund was convenience. Edmund was rebellion. Edmund was the closest thing that she could tell herself she had chosen on her own. He was an escape from the guilt she felt over Lear and Albany, and she could forget her barren womb and the blood on her hands as she was lost in the pleasure-pain of Edmund’s touch.
She did not love Edmund. And she suspected he, too, did not love her. She did not mind. If there was no love there, there was no ability to be disappointed.
But he claimed that he loved her, or, if that was a lie, at least that he understood her. That his father, too, had betrayed him, despite his love for him. That only Nature, cool impassive Nature who did not sow resentment between Her daughters nor wish for them to fawn upon Her, was their Goddess. That She would save them, even when the humans they had pledged themselves to had betrayed them.
Goneril listened to this, nodded along, but kept her heart guarded. She did not love Edmund.
…But Regan did. Or, at least, she thought she did, and in Goneril’s experience, those were often the same. Regan had lost her husband. Goneril had been by her side as Cornwall breathed her last, had watched her weep and wail at the injustice of it all.
In all honesty, it was eerie how quickly Regan seemed to have moved on from her husband. To an outsider, this would not be surprising—Goneril, for example, maintained that she would mourn Albany for no longer than the prescribed period, though she privately suspected that this was not true—but not for Regan.
Goneril remembered braiding her younger sister’s hair on the morning of her wedding, and Regan harbored none of the dread that Goneril had. From the very beginning, Regan had loved Cornwall fiercely, and he had reciprocated. They had always been a united front, best friends and equal partners as well as husband and wife.
The fact that she had fixed herself to Edmund so quickly was, rather than a testament to her resilience, proof of how broken she was. But she thought she loved Edmund, and there was nothing for Goneril to say that would convince her otherwise.
That is not to say she did not try. She tried gently to speak to Regan, tried to suggest that her grief was twisting her love for Cornwall into attachment to the closest man, because if her bed was not empty, at least she could close her eyes and pretend. Perhaps not the most tactful, but Goneril and Regan had always been truthful with one another; it was something they both respected. And her sister turned on her, whipped around and screamed in her face that she was jealous, a thankless witch, depraved and evil. And Goneril froze, because, in that moment, all she could see, smoldering in Regan’s fair, beautiful face were the stony, set jaw and cold blue eyes of her father.
So Goneril stayed quiet. She slunk away, fell back into her place and did as she was told, because that was all she knew how to do to earn the love of those whom she wished it from.
She stayed quiet as the traitor won. She stayed quiet as her father, the king, was delivered into the hands of their enemy. She stayed quiet as Edmund switched between her bed and her sister’s. She stayed quiet, and prayed silently to Nature for an escape.
And then she could no longer do as she was told.
Edmund betrayed her. Her father and sister, having been captured by his forces, were sent away to be executed—she had heard his hidden command, and her heart twisted at such a cowardly act. But she was unable to call it as it was, for Edmund had seized far too much power in too short a time, and had convinced Albany that she was plotting against him. He confronted her in the hall as she paced, wringing her hands as she confronted the fact that she could do nothing to save her youngest sister from dying by their father’s side. He shouted at her, furious, but she knew him well enough to sense the heartbreak, the confusion and betrayal beneath his harsh tone.
She tried to tell herself that he was not her enemy, but the fact that he was fool enough to fall for Edmund’s trickery, the fact that he, even for a heated moment, believed that of her told her that she truly had no one left.
So she fled back to her sister, apology starting on her lips. And then she saw Regan, lying on her bed, and she was breathing her last. Goneril’s breath and heart stopped. Her sister smiled when she saw her, despite the blood bringing color to her paling lips. Her hand reached up to ghost Goneril’s cheek, something like forgiveness in her eyes. And then it fell, hitting the mattress with a heavy sound like a death-knell.
And Goneril wailed, for she knew that she had killed her sister, as surely as if she had forced the poison down Regan’s throat herself. She had left her heart open, had not guarded Regan’s for her when she needed it, and allowed them both to fall prey to someone who saw them as objects for him to arrange as he pleased, exactly what she had promised herself she would never let happen again.
She lay down beside Regan, weeping so much that she could hardly see. She did not see the servant lingering in the door and would not care if she had. She did not realize that what he was seeing in that moment, the judgement he was making upon her would become History’s judgement. Goneril, the eldest daughter of King Lear, was beyond any concern for her own defense as she held her sister, rocking back and forth in a futile effort to soothe herself and weeping into her hair.
And it was no longer Edmund, nor her father she was thinking of as Goneril seized the dagger that hung around her waist and took the only way out she knew.