Survey Shows Regan and Goneril Unwilling To Support Lear and Cordelia

According to a realm-wide survey heralded today, two-thirds of the former King Lear’s daughters do not see why they should support either their retired father or their jobless sister Cordelia.

“This lack of support for a welfare state among the younger generation will come as a shock to many of the king’s faithful retainers, such as Kent,” proclaimed a herald. “Regan and Goneril object rather strongly to their father’s quaint notion that the state should continue to pay for his upkeep and his hundred knights. And they aren’t too hot on their unemployed sister, either, after they usurped her third of the kingdom. They don’t see why they should keep giving her handouts, just so she can raise a huge brood of feckless brats with her partner, the bone-idle King of France.”

“I’m not happy,” howled the elderly King on receiving the news. “I work bloody hard all my life to build up a decent kingdom and give my kids the best start in life, and this is the thanks I get? All I asked of them was a measly hundred knights to keep me in my declining years, and now I’ve had them taken away all I’m left with a blind old Earl of Gloucester to look after and some bloody Fool who’s no help at all. He just sits there making sarky comments.”

Stop your bloody whingeing and get a job, say under-25s

Regan and Goneril were unrepentant, however.

“This kingdom belongs to us now, yeah, and we got these big plans,” said Regan. “I don’t wanna sound like really harsh, right, but dad’s just a burden, frankly, and if he in’t got the decency to lie down quietly under a bush and die then that’s like totally not our problem.”

Goneril had equally harsh words for her weak sister Cordelia: “Mate, it’s a dog-eat-dog world right? If you’d like followed us into Canterbury Business School instead of doing some noddy Courtly Romance degree at Lindisfarne Uni, see, you might have learned to look out for yourself. You can’t just expect to live comfortably, right, on a handout from an irresponsible dad who didn’t give a shit about making financial provisions for his retirement.”

“As for that malingering bloody Earl of Gloucester,” added Regan, “I read somewhere that most so-called ‘blind’ people have like 20% vision actually, or something like that. There’s loads of jobs he could do, prob’ly, the sponging bugger, if he got up off his arse and looked.”