It's the same story the crow told me

I was looking at the ad for the film The Other Boleyn Girl, starring Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, and Eric Bana, when I thought of Lear and how my father has seemed to attempt to cast himself in the King Lear role but no one else is circling around to play along. We have our own lives going and he wants this drama that none of the rest of us have any interest in. Seems to me he's as likely to cut everyone out of his final plans out of some fit of pique or spite anyway, regardless of what we do or don't do, so it is easier to detach from all those ideas now. But I did wonder whether these patriarchal stories about primogeniture are the only ones he knows.

Edit: Was reminded of another King Lear tidbit today in a nonfiction book about the hunt for an MS cure: "Nothing comes of nothing." The fellow quoting this line took it as an exhortation to work hard and be productive with one's time; yet like all good Shakespeare lines, this one has other meanings.