Regan (King Lear) measure of pain that others are prepared to inflict; her mind itself is a lynch mob" (291). Regan (King Lear) Regan is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's tragic play, "King Lear", named after a King of the Britons recorded by the medieval scribe Geoffrey of Monmouth. Shakespeare based the character on "Regan", a personage described by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical chronicle "Historia regum Britanniae" ("History of the Kings of Britain", ) as one of the British king Lear's three daughters, alongside Goneril and Cordeilla (the source for Cordelia), and the mother of Cunedagius. She is the middle
King Lear his subjects, not just his children, to address him in paternal terms, which infantises most of the people around him, which pointedly references James's statement in his 1598 book "The Trew Law of Free Monarchies" that the king is the "father of the nation", for whom all of his subjects are his children. "King Lear" provides a basis for "the primary enactment of psychic breakdown in English literary history". The play begins with Lear's "near-fairytale narcissism". Given the absence of legitimate mothers in "King Lear", Coppélia Kahn provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the "maternal subtext" found in the play. According