Mistrust is evident in the play, as there were many instances of doubts about the child's parents. When Goneril threatens to dismiss Lear's knights, Lear asks her, "Are you our daughter?" (1.4.224) Lear cannot believe that his daughter would ask him to tolerate this affront, and attributes that only someone else's son would treat him like this, doubting his wife's faithfulness to his marriage. Gloucester also claims that he "never had [Edgar]" (2.1.91) as he is convinced that Edgar is plotting to kill him. He accuses his wife of infidelity as he also assumes that a child fathered by him would not want to commit such an abhorrent crime against him. When Regan meets Lear at Gloucester Castle, Lear tells her that if she were not happy to see him, he would "divorce [himself] from [Regan's] mother's grave" (2.4.147) as that would mean "burial of an adult" ress” (2.4.149). Lear is saying that if Regan was not happy to see him, she would not be his daughter and therefore his wife would be an adulteress. Lear and Gloucester both assume that no impertinence can arise from their sons and that any misconduct on the part of their supposed sons is due to the lack of blood connection between the father and the son. Since, at the time of the play, a mother is the only person who knows who her child's father actually is, while men can never ascertain the true inheritance of their children, the fact that Lear and Gloucester attribute the incorrectness of the their children to their mother's loyalty clearly shows their distrust. For