SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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exercise her own agency. Though she is the legitimate sovereign, Panthea at once
marries Arbaces, steps aside, and Iberia gains a king instead of a queen. The implication
is that it is only natural that everyone in Iberia wants a king—not a queen—as it follows
divine order. Arbaces never rejects his feelings for Panthea; instead, she is transformed
into a suitable partner through an unexpected revelation. Arbaces would have chosen sin
and damnation had not the comic turn saved him from tragedy. Arbaces, and by extension
all Iberia, lingered in disorder and near-madness until this order was restored. Shared
political power cannot exist; there must be one sovereign in absolute control, and it
should be a king instead of a queen. In this way the concerns of the dominant social class
over the role of women are put to rest by reasserting patriarchy, while the growing sense
of tragedy is a mechanism to explore the disaster that might befall a land under the rule of
a tyrannical king.
The play approaches a criticism of the tyranny of absolute monarchy through the
threat of incest. Boehrer condenses the impact of the plot of A King, and No King thus:
Arane wishes to abide by the laws of patriarchy but is unable to conceive a child, leading
her to concoct the infant-switch scheme. Then after the deed is done she does have a
child, but it is a daughter instead of a son. At the beginning of the play Arbaces rules,
which is a case of misdirected inheritance and a violation of primogeniture. But Arbaces’
deference to Panthea as the proper ruler—a woman—violates patriarchy. Added to these
problems is the evidently incestuous attachment between the two. In the end, these “three
wrongs make a right,” which culminates in the “bliss of royal wedded love,” as God
intended.