All's Well That Ends Well

The play opens in Rousillon, then a Catalan province of Spain (now in France), where young Count Bertram bids farewell to his mother the Countess and Helena, as he leaves for the court of Paris (with old Lord Lafew) at the French King's order. Bertram's father has recently died and Bertram is to be the King's ward and attendant. Helena, a young minor noblewoman and ward of the Countess, whose father (a gifted doctor) has also recently died, laments her unrequitable love for (or infatuation with) Bertram, and losing him to Paris, which weighs on her though it seems to others that she mourns her father.