Regan: The Sister Who Goes Further

Regan says in Act 1 Scene 1 that Goneril has spoken for her heart exactly. It is the most efficient self-revelation in the play: she outsources her flattery and matches it. The pattern continues. Goneril acts; Regan escalates.

When Cornwall puts out Gloucester's eyes in Act 3 Scene 7, Regan is present. She encourages it. When a servant intervenes and wounds Cornwall, she kills the servant. This is not cruelty as strategy. It is cruelty as appetite.

She is the first of the two sisters to die, poisoned by Goneril over Edmund, a man she presumably never intended to feel anything real for. Her character arc is almost entirely downward, and that is the point. She begins the play performing love and ends it as the clearest example in Shakespeare of a person who has no use for it at all.