“I thought I could change it," Claudius says, still quiet, gaze fixed. “By staying here. I thought all the deaths — my sister’s and yours, your own and no doubt Hamlet’s, too — sprung from me and my sin, as all murders sprung from Cain’s. In truth … the men of my family are all unwell. We all have wild, whirling moods, long spells of melancholy followed by flights of mania where our fixations ride us. It’s well-known, but no one says the words — they say my brother has a war-like passion, or that my nephew is deep-feeling in his youth. Shen Yuan told me … to take his father’s vengeance on me, my nephew plays at madness. And thy sister must have borne the worst of it, when she should have been most protected. But the madness that afflicts us is no act, and it has always been women like Gertrude, like Ophelia, who have been forced to bear it. To soothe and comfort our moods while pretending all is well to the public, never showing the burden until at last something breaks. It broke thy sister’s will to live. I am sorry.” And this is the true apology. “We should have made a better kingdom for her. I believe Gertrude will … but if it comes too late, it will be because of the inheritance I and my brother have left her.”