Help the kingdom's chief gossipmonger set the record straight about the latest royal scandal.

The rumors claim the King gave the dragon to the Duke, but it was actually _____ he gifted the fire-breathing beast!

The correct answer is to the Duchess that.

In a cleft sentence, if the original verb requires a preposition (e.g., "gifted [something] to [someone]"), that preposition must either stay at the end of the relative clause or move with the focused noun.

Because the sentence ends with "he gifted the fire-breathing beast!" (missing the preposition "to"), the preposition must be included in the focus: It was to the Duchess. When a prepositional phrase is the focus of a cleft sentence, we use that to introduce the relative clause.