Lear and Cordelia

I definitely think that there was reconciliation between Cordelia and Lear. The way I interpreted it was that Cordelia forgave him even as he was banishing her. She is painted as a such a selfless, honest and loving person. She, out of duty, truly does love her father. Although she is in France, Cordelia has never left her father in her heart; she still loves him and feels it is her duty to correct the wrong being done to him. She prepares her armies in France to invade her sisters’ land and avenge her father.
After Cordelia is banished, she says to her sisters “I know you what you are/And like a sister am most loath to call/Your faults as they are named. Love well our father./To your professed bosoms I commit him.” To me this is saying, I know you guys and I know you are up to something, but take care of our father because I’m leaving him in your hands. This almost seems like a warning. She then goes on to say “Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides;/Who covers faults, at last shame them derides./Well may you prosper.” I took this to mean only time will tell if you are being genuine, if not it will be your downfall, but I really hope this doesn’t happen.
Lear, on the other hand, is so blinded by power and pride that he can’t see Cordelia’s love for him as what it is: pure and true. It takes him being betrayed by his so-called loving daughters and losing everything for him to see how he has wronged Cordelia. Throughout the scenes involving the storm, Lear seems to feel remorse about this among other things. In scene 2 lines 47-49, he is feeling sorry for himself: “Tremble, thou wretch,/That hast within thee undivulged crimes/unwhipped of justice.” Although this could be about any number of things, I like to think that he is chastising himself for his actions against Cordelia. In the fourth act, Kent tells Cordelia’s gentleman that Lear is so ashamed that he cannot face his daughter. “A sovereign shame so elbows him—his own unkindness/That stripped her from his benediction, turned her/To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights/To his dog-hearted daughters—these things sting/His mind so venomously that burning shame/Detains him from Cordelia.”
In the end, the only thing that could keep Lear from reconciling with his daughter is his pride. He is so ashamed that he cannot face her, but once brought together as prisoners he says “We two alone will sing like birds i’th’ cage./When thou dost ask blessing, I’ll kneel down/And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,/To pray, and sing, and tell old tales and laugh”. Although he does not come out and ask for forgiveness, he still talks of kneeling down and asking her for it. This, to me, is definitely a step in the right direction. He also says, “He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven”, which turns out to happen almost immediately. However, all the people directly responsible for this parting die themselves (Goneril, Regan, Edmund, the Captain) and I like to think that Lear and Cordelia are once again reunited in death.