Furthermore, James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, thereby uniting the kingdoms of the island of Britain into one, and a major issue of his reign was the attempt to forge a common British identity. James had given his sons Henry and Charles the titles of Duke of Cornwell and Duke of Albany, the same titles bore by the men married to Regan and Goneril. The play begins with Lear ruling all of Britain and ends with him destroying his realm; the critic Andrew Hadfield argued that the division of Britain by Lear was an inversion of the unification of Britain by James, who believed his policies would result in a well governed and prosperous unified realm being passed on to his heir. Hadfield argued that the play was meant as a warning to James as in the play a monarch loses everything by giving in to his sycophantic courtiers who only seek to use him while neglecting those who truly loved him. Hadfield also argued that the world of Lear's court is "childish" with Lear presenting himself as the father of the nation and requiring all of 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.