Fleance
In Holinshed, Fleance escapes Macbeth and flees to England, where he fathers a son who later becomes the first hereditary steward to the King of Scotland.
In real life, 'Steward' eventually became the name 'Stewart' (later changed to a pseudo Frenchification 'Stuart'), and Walter Stewart married Princess Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce.
Fleance and his father Banquo are both fictional characters presented as historical fact by the Scottish historian Hector Boece, whose Scotorum Historiae (1526–27) was a source for Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles,[1] a history of the British Isles popular in Shakespeare's time.
[2] The Stuarts used their connection with Fleance and his marriage to the Welsh princess to claim a genealogical link with the legendary King Arthur.
Scholars suggest that Shakespeare does not elaborate on Fleance's life after his escape from Scotland to avoid unnecessary distraction from the story of Macbeth himself.
[6] Fleance also briefly appears in the first scene of Act 2, when his father tells him of "cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose!".
"[10] When the murderers return to Macbeth and report their failure to kill Fleance, he says, "Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect, / Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, / As broad and general as the casing air: / But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.
In the first scene of Act 2, Fleance meets his father, who asks him to take his sword and tells him he is reluctant to go to bed due to the "cursed thoughts that nature / gives way to in repose!
[21] When Macbeth returns to the witches later in the play, they show him an apparition of the murdered Banquo, along with eight kings of his family, descending through Fleance.
This scene thus suggests strong support for James' right to the throne by lineage, and for audiences of Shakespeare's day, was a tangible fulfilment of the witches' prophecy.
The BBC Shakespeare version of Macbeth shows Fleance in the final scene, implying his future role in bringing Banquo's line to the throne.
[25] In another gangster adaptation, Men of Respect (1991), Fleance is replaced by a character named Phil, who similarly helps overthrow Mike (Macbeth) after his father, Bankie (Banquo), is murdered.
One of the characters he elbows is Fleance (a skinhead), who makes a mock gun out of his fingers and "shoots" at the back of the darker-skinned Malcolm's skull.
Washizu takes the throne and at one point is about to make Yoshiteru his heir, but changes his mind when his wife tells him she is pregnant.
[33] In the 2006 modern dress film adaptation, set among gangsters in Melbourne, Fleance (Craig Stott) is depicted as a teenage boy, looking slightly older than in the original play.
He also appears a bit more often, mainly in the scenes of Act V, where he sneaks on board a truck full of timber and witnesses the death of Macbeth before killing the maid and being directed home by Macduff.
[34] In 2008, Pegasus Books published The Tragedy of Macbeth Part II: The Seed of Banquo, a play by American author and playwright Noah Lukeman that endeavoured to pick up where the original Macbeth left off, and to resolve its many loose ends, particularly the prophesied ascension of the seed of Banquo.
