Blood is thicker than water, but when run through a sieve, blood will clot on you first. This Baker adage is common knowledge, passed through generations. But why is it applicable? Are family ties the very things that tangle when agitated? Can proximity to loved ones blur their flaws and exaggerate their mistakes? Such is a line of inquiry shadowed in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With convoluted familial relations, protagonist Prince Hamlet’s relationship with his mother, Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, is most often his source of ire and ill-intent as he questions the actions of someone who should be an ally above all else. The extent to which Prince Hamlet’s assertions of Gertrude’s poor mothering skills is true is a key component to understanding…show more content… After the mysterious death of King Hamlet, Prince Hamlet’s father, the King’s brother, Claudius, weds Gertrude, the King Hamlet’s widow and Prince Hamlet’s mother, just shy of two months after his death (Shakespeare). The second scene of the play opens to the wedding reception of Claudius and Gertrude, with Prince Hamlet cloaked in mourning clothes. He quips that “The funeral bak'd meats/ Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” (Shakespeare, I, ii). Thus, his disdain for his mother’s and uncle-father’s “incestuous sheets” is established (I, ii). As the play progresses, Hamlet goes on to call his mother an “adulterate beast” (I, iv) and an “incestuous, murderous dane” (V, ii). But is their discordance justified? Is Gertrude a bad…show more content… This move can be seen as political as well familial. On a family side, the death of a father, let alone a beloved member of the royal family must have been extremely emotionally damaging for Hamlet, as the play revolves around his vengeance. Perhaps Gertrudes “dexterity to incestuous sheets” was in an effort to provide Hamlet with a father-figure who was at least familiar to him (I, ii). Politically, the climate of the royal court after Claudius’s death must have been tumultuous. King Hamlet’s suspected murder and Claudius’s power grab may have been transparent to Gertrude and her decision to accept Claudius’s offer was not only one to protect her life and the life of her son, the only heir to King Hamlet’s throne, but also to secure her kingdom. If both the King and Queen had died of mysterious causes and the kingdom was suddenly under the rule of a stranger with unknown motives and intentions, the lives and livelihoods of many would have most definitely been at risk. Her actions may very well have been the only way she could secure the safety of her life, the life she bore, and the kingdom she called her