I put the question mark in the title because it’s very questionable that King Lear was a good king. I certainly would not brand him a wicked character, though he did make a major miscalculation in punishing Cordelia. This is especially true considering that she was the only one of his daughters who did not want him completely out of the way. This calls into judgment if King Lear was a good king meaning a king who is good at his job, opposed to a king who is morally good or not. If we’re discussing wickedness in this play, Goneril, Regan, and Edmund would definitely take precedence over Lear.

And there is no doubt that King Lear’s starting to lose it a bit in his old age. His already volatile sanity is further provoked by the wickedness of two of his daughters. But it might help to question the sanity of both Goneril and Regan. One would have to at least be a little bit mad to treat your aging father who has already given his land to you as terribly as both of them do. Their borderline and sociopathic behavior in plotting, planning, lying to others, lying to each other, and murderous actions do not seem sane in a play that is very vocal about questioning insanity. Cordelia, however, contrasts from her two sisters by being the most honest and self-aware character. She instead suffers from the mistake of not knowing when it is a good time to speak against her father, even if it is mistaken to mean something else by him. That mistake, as noble and honest as it is, proves to be the first instance known to the reader where Lear‘s sanity is called into question. It ends up being a slippery slope of madness that cannot be stopped before major tragic repercussions.