What is the importance of Kingship, in Macbeth?

The idea of kingship is essential to Macbeth for a number of reasons. In Jacobean times, the King was the most important person alive, and was, in the eyes of the citizens, “God’s anointed temple” The King was God’s vessel, chosen by Him to enact God’s will on Earth. The struggle for Scotland’s throne is Macbeth’s main plot device, the catalyst that drives the narrative. It is the title of kingship that the character of Macbeth initially fights to protect (for Duncan), in the civil war at the beginning, which shows him as “Brave Macbeth”, a hero and loyal servant to the monarch. It is then what Macbeth murders Duncan for, the idea planted in him by the witches that he will be “King hereafter,” an idea that the rewards, the mere idea of being the all-powerful King, was enough to turn a loyal servant into a cruel tyrant. This goes against the Divine Right of Kings, the notion that Kings were chosen by God to be His messenger and rule for Him. God would have chosen Duncan, and the fact that Macbeth murders Duncan and usurps his throne is a heretical slant against Him.The Kingship is then a thing Macbeth kills to protect, but instead of killing soldiers to protect his rightful King, he slaughters defenceless women and children to send a terrifying message against any dissent. This shows Macbeth’s development in character from “Brave Macbeth,” morphing because of his new role as King. A struggle for Macbeth because it is unnatural – he isn’t supposed to be King; he took it for himself, and his reign reflects that by being an extremely difficult and strange one. Macbeth gradually goes insane, becoming a tyrant which plunges his country into despair and partial ruin, (which falls in line with the Body Politic, an idea that that if a King should suffer, so would his whole country; everything trickles down from the top) and leads his subjects and nobles to revolt against him and then kill him, not only to end his tyranny, but to place the Kingship on Malcolm, the rightful heir. The idea of kingship, for those who are not destined to it, has the ability to cause civil war, overreaching struggles, and the destruction of the sanity and goodness of a man like Macbeth, as the idea, then actual task of being King breaks him down, eventually snapping his (and his wife’s) minds and hearts, showing the pressure and hardship of being King, and what happens if someone other than God’s anointed temple tries to do it themselves.