| King Duncan | |
|---|---|
| Macbeth character | |
 Lady Macbeth at the bedside of King Duncan (Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 1850) | |
| Created by | William Shakespeare |
| Based on | Donnchad mac Crinain (Duncan I) of Scotland |
| In-universe information | |
| Children | Malcolm, elder son and heir Donalbain, younger son |
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.