Which scholar asserts that Dido's change from good to bad queen occurs because her activities as a lover compromise her status as a good king?

• A. Helga Nehrkorn
• B. Desmond M
• C. Richard Jenkyns
• D. Camps

Answer: (B)

The main idea this question tests is how critics read Dido’s decline in relation to her public role as queen versus her private passion for Aeneas. Desmond M makes the strongest case by arguing that Dido’s actions as a lover undermine her legitimacy as a good ruler. When she yields to love, her focus shifts from governing Carthage and fostering stable leadership to pursuing personal desire, and that shift corrodes the political virtues the role of queen requires. In the poem, Dido’s public responsibilities—hospitality, alliance-building, and prudent statecraft—are gradually displaced by an obsession shaped by romance. That upheaval in judgment and priority helps explain why she is portrayed as moving from capable monarch to a ruler whose decisions are guided by passion rather than prudence. The arc culminates in a self-destructive intensification of private aims, which many readers see as a pointed critique of how private love can wreck public power.

Other scholars offer valuable angles—some emphasize tragedy, others focus on epic technique or gender dynamics—but Desmond M’s reading foregrounds the political consequence of the love affair, showing how private desire directly compromises the governance expected of a good queen.