The Natural Daughter is the last of Goethe’s three verse dramas in the classical style, after Iphigenia and Torquato Tasso. Drawing on the real story of a young woman caught up in the French Revolution, it explores the impact of uncontrollable events on ordinary people’s lives. Its present obscurity is partly due to its apparently unfinished state: Goethe planned a second part, which he never wrote. But in its focus on the main character Eugenia ("well-born"), like the Revolution itself a product of the Enlightenment, the play examines the interaction between natural integrity and social compromise. Beautiful, talented and well-connected as the Duke’s daughter, Eugenia has every prospect of a glittering career – except that she is illegitimate. A riding accident in the countryside brings her face to face with the King, who offers to recognise her formally at court in return for her father’s support against a rumoured republican conspiracy. Despite the prospect of political turmoil the Duke and his daughter seem confident of a future full of promise.