King Duncan

King Duncan
Macbeth character
Lady Macbeth at the bedside of King Duncan (Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 1850)
Created by	William Shakespeare
Based on	Donnchad mac Crinain (Duncan I) of Scotland
In-universe information
Children	Malcolm, elder son and heir Donalbain, younger son

King Duncan is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Macbeth. He is the father of two youthful sons (Malcolm and Donalbain), and the victim of a well-plotted regicide in a power grab by his trusted captain Macbeth. The origin of the character lies in a narrative of the historical Donnchad mac Crinain, King of Scots, in Raphael Holinshed's 1587 The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Unlike Holinshed's incompetent King Duncan (who is credited in the narrative with a "feeble and slothful administration"), Shakespeare's King Duncan is crafted as a sensitive, insightful, and generous father-figure whose murder grieves Scotland and is accounted the cause of turmoil in the natural world.