King Duncan is a fictional character in
Shakespeare's
Macbeth. He is the father of two youthful sons (
Malcolm and
Donalbain), and the victim of a well-plotted
regicide in a power grab by his trusted captain
Macbeth. The origin of the character lies in a narrative of the historical
Donnchad mac Crinain,
King of Scots, in
Raphael Holinshed's
1587 The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Unlike Holinshed's incompetent King Duncan (who is credited in the narrative with a "feeble and slothful administration"), Shakespeare's King Duncan is crafted as a sensitive, insightful, and generous father-figure whose murder grieves Scotland and is accounted the cause of turmoil in the natural world.