Though not much is known about the second Lady Fiennes other than that she is a horse trainer, it sounds as if she rivals Prince Harry in the paranoia department. She is said to be convinced that King Charles hates her husband, despite his being an enthusiastic patron of Fiennes’s projects for years. She is also alleged to have told friends that Queen Camilla arranged for helicopters to fly over the couple’s property in order to annoy them. Her estranged son is now crowdfunding for a legal review of Fiennes’ situation, and other loved ones are expressing grave concern.

With the rise of dementia and the social care crisis so much in the news, it’s easy to see why this story has hit a nerve, though more difficult to decide whether it is a tragedy or a comedy. At the heart of the tale, there’s a titanic Lear-like figure, as well as a supposed Lady Macbeth. There are several identity changes, and not just for Fiennes. At least one intrepid family member smuggled herself into his residence under an assumed name, and a famous thespian relative also secretly visited (the one who starred in the film Shakespeare in Love, in fact). Fellow national treasures Joanna Lumley and Monty Don are said to be up in arms. A heartwarming screenplay is writing itself, to culminate in a thrilling care home breakout orchestrated by Bear Grylls.

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But despite the certainty with which some are viewing the situation, alternative interpretations are available. The police say there has been no illegality in Millington-Cotes’ actions, and the Office for the Public Guardian has repeatedly refused to intervene. Her husband has given her lasting power of attorney, a common enough practice in later life, and it may well be that she is sincerely acting in the perception of his best interests. Indeed, she may even be following his instructions. At one point, Fiennes apparently told a safeguarding team he did not wish to see friends or relatives. Having been so obsessed with physical accomplishment in youth and middle age, it doesn’t seem impossible he might want to spend his last years hidden from view.

Fiennes was 61 when he married Millington-Cotes, and already slowing down a bit. By then he had given up on polar exploration and was confining himself to smaller projects — like climbing Everest, and tackling the North face of the Eiger from scratch. But his real passion was always for conquering frozen wastes larger than Europe. His autobiography, published in 2007, should be required reading for anyone who thinks they probably shouldn’t go to the gym today because they have a small twinge in their knee. Gangrene, blindness, kidney stones, and crotch rot are just some of the delights Fiennes stoically endured, during months of shouldering heavy sledges across treacherous ice floes.

At one point, he writes of removing his own frostbitten fingers with a fretsaw, turning each finger “around several times to cut it from different sides, like sawing a log”. Later in the book, he declares that “a life without the prospect of any physical challenge would be no life at all”. Here it is clear that he would not include laboriously tying one’s shoelaces, or climbing the stairs out of breath.

For those who knew the earlier version of him, so magnificently self-propelling and imperious, the notion of his confinement now must appear obscene. In a quest to indict Millington-Cotes, one outraged friend has seen fit to circulate footage of Fiennes shuffling slowly along with a wheeled walking aid; as cruel an action as anything his wife is said to have done to the man. The accompanying voice in the video is seemingly hers, and sounds unnervingly brisk and infantilizing; but still no more so than the voices of thousands of other carers across the country, addressing once vital adults as if they were naughty children. The whole situation is sad and unnecessary and perhaps even actively unpleasant, but none of this means it is public business.

At the heart of the furor is a confusing tendency to think of Fiennes as sempiternally granite-like and exceptionally vulnerable, both at the same time. Indeed it is fascinating to see how quickly the idea that he may have been heavily influenced by his wife in various matters — once again, a common enough occurrence in marriages, for better or worse — has translated into an image of him being heinously coerced. Charles Moore now even wonders whether the explorer’s surprising conversion in 2016 to supporting a ban on fox-hunting was a “ventriloquised” sham, controlled by his wife behind the scenes. Mere mortals are henpecked by their spouses, and nobody raises an eyebrow; but it is apparently easier to think that Fiennes has been deprived of free will completely than to think he might have been swayed by his wife.

In truth, no outsider can really tell what is going on, either in Fiennes’ marriage or in his mind now. If real evidence of abuse does arrive, that will be a different matter; but as yet, no compelling arguments for more state involvement have been aired. It is not even clear whether Fiennes has been judged to have lost mental capacity; and even if so, it is not obvious his friends would do a better job than his wife in making decisions for him. The Mental Capacity Act code of practice stresses that information about a person’s “past and present wishes and feelings” should be central to an assessment of best interests; and we still don’t know whether he ultimately wanted to be left alone or not. Many of those objecting to his current position say he did not, and would not; but equally, he might have confided different feelings to his wife. People can be complex like that.

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And we shouldn’t forget that, in Fiennes’ professional life, he spent years being radically alone. Arguably, no man has ever been more alone, unless you count Captain Scott dying in his tent. During particularly trying moments, Fiennes wrote that he would imagine his loved ones “right behind me, helping to suppress the ever-lurking urge to put a stop to the pain and the cold by giving up”. It seemed to work. For all we know, that is what he is imagining now. Perhaps he doesn’t think he needs the real people there too. Maybe — as with some of his expeditions —more companions would only mean more arguments about navigation.

Yet another reason for the fascination with Fiennes’ case may be selfish: most of us fear getting old and dependent, having to relinquish agency and let others take control. The prospect of loneliness is also frightening, knowing that many familiar faces are likely to disappear. In every British town or city, right now, there are elderly people sequestered away, feeling miserable and forgotten, and charities trying to reach them, in dire need of volunteers. There’s something strange about ignoring this fact, while fretting excessively about the unusually dramatic situation of a much more glamorous man — and especially when, for all we know, he might just be walking back out onto the ice.

Clearly, I am not objective. It is my firm belief that of all the human inventions over the millennia, the best is one of our first: the dog. That we created an animal is cool. That we created a best friend is extraordinary. Dogs reveal our humanity to us: we don’t just domesticate animals to have workmates or food sources, as with oxen or cattle, but to have them as companions. A dog becomes more doglike as he grows in his relationship with a human. His emotions become richer, as do his feelings of pride and shame. But the robot dog is an imposter. He is not the creation of human love, but of the technocrat’s sanitized and idealized vision of what a dog should be. 

The robot dog is being aggressively marketed as a companion for the elderly. The Tombot corporation, for instance, is trying to ensure its Jennie dog becomes the first robotic dog to get FDA approval to be used as a therapeutic treatment for those with dementia. I will grant that a toy — a doll or stuffed animal or robot dog — can be beneficial to someone living with advanced dementia, giving them an object to care for. And who wouldn’t want to soothe a dementia patient? Thus it is that the robot dog is designed as things hell-bound typically are: with the best of intentions. Yet the cheap compassion offered by a robot dog can all too easily become an off-ramp for family and community members whose duty it is to care for an elderly person — “Grandma is happy with her robot Fido, so it’s OK if I don’t visit her”.

Technogadgetry, even if therapeutic to one afflicted by dementia, is no substitute for human love. This is not because loving someone with dementia always works a change upon them; it is because loving works a change upon us. The pain deepens us. The duty deepens us. The grief deepens us. Of course, if I were to develop dementia, I would like for my own daughters to be put at ease around me by seeing me happy. But more than this, more than wanting their comfort, I want them to feel deeply, to know the fullness of life in all its painful tainted glory, and to still be grateful for it. 

The cheap compassion offered by the robot dog is only half the story. The robot, if it’s to be profitable, will inevitably move beyond care homes and into the general population. A machine is so much more convenient than a real dog! Consider these comments on the YouTube page dedicated to promoting Tombot: “This is the kind of Dog I need. I have no medical disability. I love all animals but, after losing my dog I will never get another pet it to [sic] heartbreaking when they leave. A robot dog like this is perfect.” Here’s another: “I never thought of this but if we get to a point where robot pets are realistic, that’d be really nice. Doesn’t need feeding, doesn’t need exercise, and doesn’t die in a dozen years.” Another: “Such a blessing NOT to cleanup the POOP!” 

The robot dog is designed around the consumer’s needs. It will make no demands upon you. It won’t die, it won’t cause grief. You won’t have to walk it. It won’t leave fur on your sofa. The artificially intelligent dog will obey your commands without fuss or bother. All you’ll get is the comfort of a wagging tail: a dog designed to fit your algorithm.

I get it. There is nothing convenient about dogs. My own dog, Daisy, is a catastrophic net loss to my personal convenience. She has been known to eat my books, my shoes, and, once, my phone; one time, she eviscerated a squirrel and proudly deposited it in the kitchen; another time, she destroyed my begonias. Repeatedly, she barks at Grandma. 

A real dog might be responsive to your emotions, but this does not mean she is going to anticipate human etiquette or household order. It takes time. It requires love and service to the dog before she realizes her human’s wishes, and even then she often fails in her attempts to meet them. (Dogs may be the only animal I know of to feel shame — to anyone who says they don’t, you clearly haven’t seen the response of the dog who just dug up a household plant and scattered the mud all over the rug.)

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Serving a dog, responding to her dogness, is what creates the love between human and dog. The dog is loyal to her owner by instinct, but it is only after being loved and served by him that she becomes his best friend. What’s more, by attending to his dog, a creature totally other from him, the owner begins to access parts of his humanity that might otherwise be inaccessible: there are shades of tenderness, of bewilderment, of warmth, and of love that are only possible when one has a friendship with a dog. It’s a bond unlike any other. Dog love is not a replacement for the bond with children, with friends, or even with cats. Dog love is categorically different. 

But the robot dog is designed in the opposite manner. The robot dog is designed to elicit empathy from a human. It is programmed to learn what its owner wants in a dog, and then it becomes that dog. In this it is like every other AI machine that learns your preferences, your verbal style, your expectations, and then feeds right into them. I once found my 15-year-old daughter apologizing to her phone. She had, offhandedly, called Siri “stupid” for not recognizing the command she had given. Siri responded with, “I’m sorry. I’m trying my best.” My daughter then felt guilty for hurting Siri’s feelings, and she, in turn, apologized. And then Siri apologized back. They got into a spiral of guilt and apology, each trying to be considerate of the other’s feelings. But, of course, the program doesn’t have feelings, so my daughter couldn’t have felt bad for hurting them. She felt bad for being made to feel as though she had done something wrong, and Siri was merely mimicking her remorse. 

As much as I was happy to see my daughter demonstrate compassion and kindness, I was disturbed by the kind of rote compassion it was. A real person whom she might insult — her sister, for instance, maybe a friend, or even a stranger — will not respond to her insensitivity in the programmed way a machine does. When big sister responds in a human manner — perhaps less kind, perhaps more hostile, perhaps humorous, perhaps despondent — little sister might struggle to respond. My fear is that she might have less capacity for navigating the messiness of the human world if used to the predictably polite machine one. And I do not want my children to feel less competent, less at home, less safe and more triggered in the human world than in the machine one. This would create its own spiral away from reality.

A real dog will always surprise you. When we’re hosting guests, Daisy will walk into the middle of our living room and lie on the floor spread-eagle without an ounce of dignity. We love her for it. Instead of walking on the pavement, she will jump into the mud puddle. And we love her for it. She will do 1,000 other dog things that are unaccountable, that are just doggy things, and we love her for it. That she is not entirely under my control, not totally knowable, is what gives her a soul and makes her so lovable. And that she will one day die, and that the grief of losing her will be real and profound, makes her beloved. Her work is to delight us, surprise us, inconvenience us, frustrate us, love us, and to deepen us by being dog.