Duke's Reaction to the Duchess' Behavior

3.            When the Duke was talking about the last Duchess, it sounded like that the Duke was very against the Duchess’ behavior towards him. Some of the incidents were the gifts given to the Duchess and the behavior that were shown from the Duchess that angered the Duke. For example, when the Duke stated that his gift was felt ranked which was the nine hundred years old name, meaning there must have been a lot of value in the gift in which the Duchess did not exactly appreciate. Another example that shows that the Duchess did not fully appreciate the Duke was that when the Duchess gave a smile to people passing by whether they were subordinates of the Duke or not, the Duke felt that he was being treated the same like those inferior units. This was another trivial incident that made the Duke react immediately by ordering the people to stop their disobedient behavior and since he was the king, they now thought that he was overprotective of his queen. Based on the these incidents, I believe that the Duke either executed her or poisoned her because of how these incidents were all her choices to make in which the Duke could no longer endure through meaning he wanted to end this predicament immediately. The options could be the execute her or poison her. These are the examples within the poem that show that the Duchess undervalued the Duke for the people of the kingdom.

-Ji Lim