Honestly, who made this guy king?

After finishing the play, there was one thing that stood out to me.  King Lear (trying to say this nicely) is no genius.  I do feel sympathy for the guy at the end of the play, considering that almost everyone close to him died. However, it really is his fault.  Yes, I'm placing all of the blame on him.  Let's review the series of decisions that transformed him from a powerful king to a poor man that willed himself to die.  First, he tires of ruling and decides to divide up his kingdom amongst his daughters.  At first glance, this appears to be a fair proposition.  But let's be honest here- almost every time something gets divided up, competition and rivalry is the end result.  Did Lear really think his daughters would be satisfied with only half of a kingdom?  Power leads to greed and jealousy, making it inevitable that Lear would get caught in the crossfire of his two daughters ambitions.  That's enough about that, though.  Lear's banishment of Cordelia illustrates another misjudgment that cost him dearly in the end.  Being the arrogant king that he is, Lear felt that since Cordelia's speech wasn't eloquent enough she should be banished to France to marry the King (who has a marvelous accent, by the way).  I mean in Act 1 Scene 1, he plainly states that he loved her the most out of any of the daughters.  How does his relationship with Cordelia shatter so quickly?  I mean, she goes from being loved to banished in a few minutes.  The fact that he was so deeply hurt by Cordelia letting him down proves even further how much he loved her.  In his blind fury (I'd say he's raging right about now) he banishes one of the few people in his kingdom that are actually honest about their love.  Not a smart move.  His arrogance ties into another argument that proves his culpability.  This is concerning his "entourage" of 100 knights.  To be honest, I thought the whole business with the knights to be kind of humorous.  Imagining Lear going around wreaking havoc with his knights just seems comical to me.  But anyways, he's going around with these knights creating problems everywhere and becomes infuriated when his daughters ask him to dismiss a portion of them.  Ok, I know that Goneril and Regan are evil but I have to side with them on this one.  I mean, really, why does Lear need all these knights?  If I owned a castle and saw some old guy walk up with a small army I'd be uneasy too.  Lear doesn't even try to compromise, even though both daughters consider 25-50 knights an acceptable amount.  He just launches into this angry speech and storms off into...well, the storm.  Maybe if just for once Lear was less stubborn he could work out some of these conflicts.  But no, he wants it his way even if it means standing out in the middle of a storm (what a great idea).  Also, it's not like Lear stumbled unknowingly into darkness.  He had the Fool, Kent, and Gloucester all trying to get him to see the reality.  I mean, how many times did the Fool reference the fact that without his power, Lear would no longer be respected? Countless.  I'm not sure if Lear was sleeping during all this or if he didn't understand or what happened.  One thing is for sure- he didn't understand.   So, in short, Lear's arrogance led to his downfall.  Perhaps if he listened to someone other than himself he would've been able to avoid many of these misfortunes.  But no, he'd rather go around marauding with his knights.  Who is the real fool here?