The Ceremony of Innocence: Analysis of Major Characters.

King Ethelred, the poignantly idealistic, moralistic king of England. Against the wishes of many of his advisers and all of his family, he has signed a truce with the Danes. The plot turns around his dogged but hopeless attempts to stave off the unraveling of the fragile peace. He is a visionary who uses the peace to try to educate the peasants and equip a ship for a voyage of discovery. His ethical sense is rooted in guilt: The one man he idolized in his youth, his pious stepbrother who was ruling the country, was killed by his mother so that Ethelred could take the throne. Perhaps for this reason, he is almost truculent in his refusal to compromise on ethical questions. As the play proceeds, he becomes more and more isolated from his pragmatic advisers, until he is ready to forfeit his kingdom to maintain his purity.