The supper of the six dethroned monarchs

The supper of the six dethroned monarchs is a gathering in Venice where Candide and Martin find that their fellow diners have each once ruled a country. One by one, the strangers disclose how they lost their thrones: through deposition in childhood, dynastic reversals, war, or political collapse. The scene turns a shared meal into a compressed survey of sovereign power’s instability, and its most concrete reversal comes when the wealthy Candide gives a diamond to Theodore of Corsica, a former king who says he is now scarcely worth a farthing.

The supper and its reveal

One evening, Candide and Martin are preparing to dine with foreigners staying at the same inn when a dark-complexioned man approaches Candide, takes him by the arm, and orders him to come along. The summons leads into a chapter devoted to the supper and the identities of its guests. Once the servants have left, the six strangers remain in silence with Candide and Martin. Candide breaks it by pointing out the apparent absurdity: all six claim to be kings, while neither he nor Martin is one.

The answer comes from the first speaker, the master of Cacambo. He identifies himself as Achmet III, formerly Grand Sultan. He had dethroned his brother, but his nephew then dethroned him; his viziers were beheaded, and he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the old Seraglio. His nephew, Sultan Mahmoud, allows him to travel occasionally for his health, and the visit to Venice is for the Carnival. His account makes the changes of fortune within one ruling family the opening example of the company’s shared condition: power has passed from one relative to another, while the former sovereign’s movement remains subject to permission.

Six histories of lost sovereignty

Ivan, the next speaker, describes a different kind of dispossession. He says he was Emperor of all the Russias but was dethroned in his cradle. His parents were imprisoned, and he was educated in prison; when allowed to travel, he goes with people acting as guards. His presence at the Carnival therefore follows neither unrestricted royal travel nor a return to authority, but a limited journey under supervision.

Charles Edward identifies himself as King of England and says his father resigned all his legal rights to him. He fought to defend those rights, but more than eight hundred of his adherents were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and he himself was imprisoned. He is traveling to Rome to visit his father, who, like Charles Edward and his grandfather, has been dethroned. His speech links the loss of a crown to the lethal consequences borne by supporters as well as to the repeated displacement of three generations.

Two further guests both call themselves King of Poland, but their accounts are distinct. The first says the fortune of war stripped him of his hereditary dominions. He recalls that his father endured the same reversals and professes resignation to Providence, as do Achmet III, Ivan, and Charles Edward. The second says he has been dethroned twice. Providence, he claims, gave him another country, where he did more good than the Sarmatian kings had done on the banks of the Vistula. His account offers not only another loss of a throne but a contrast: political displacement has, in his telling, been followed by useful rule elsewhere.

The last speaker, Theodore of Corsica, presents the sharpest contrast between a royal title and material destitution. Elected King of Corsica, he once had the title of Majesty; now, he says, he is scarcely treated as a gentleman. He had coined money but is now worth no farthing, had two secretaries of state but scarcely has a valet, and has known both a throne and straw in a common jail in London. Like the others, he has come to see the Carnival at Venice, but fears that he will meet the same treatment there. His speech makes the reversals of sovereignty legible in changes of money, household, lodging, and social regard.

Candide’s gift and the gathering’s aftermath

The other five kings listen to Theodore with compassion. Each gives him twenty sequins for clothes and linen; Candide gives him a diamond worth two thousand sequins. The difference in scale surprises the five monarchs, who wonder who this apparently private person can be, since he is able to give, and has actually given, a hundred times as much as any of them. At this table, former titles do not determine who possesses resources in the present: the displaced rulers offer assistance, but Candide’s wealth makes the largest material intervention.

As the company rises from supper, four more Serene Highnesses arrive, also stripped of their territories by the fortune of war and also visiting Venice for the Carnival. Their entrance extends the gathering beyond its original six, suggesting that the room’s parade of dispossessed rulers is not finished. Candide, however, pays them no attention. His thoughts are occupied by the voyage to Constantinople in search of Cunegonde, so the scene’s political spectacle does not displace his personal objective.

Narrative and thematic significance

The episode gives a sequence of particular histories rather than a single explanation for political downfall. Achmet III describes dynastic succession and constrained travel; Ivan, deposition from infancy and imprisonment; Charles Edward, contested inheritance, the deaths of his adherents, and exile; the two Polish kings, losses through war and repeated deposition; Theodore, the collapse of royal status into poverty and jail. Their shared attendance at one supper gathers these unequal paths together without making their losses identical.

Their repeated references to Providence sit beside accounts of beheading, imprisonment, execution, and dispossession. The supper does not resolve that tension; it lets the monarchs’ professions of resignation stand against the concrete circumstances they recount. The chapter’s brisk succession of self-introductions also suits the larger tale’s compressed, rapidly moving form. Each guest supplies a miniature political history, and the turn from royal self-disclosure to the distribution of money gives those histories an immediate consequence: the former kings display compassion, while Candide’s diamond reveals how far his present fortune exceeds theirs. Yet even this extraordinary company cannot hold his attention for long. The scene ends with the kings still gathered in Venice and Candide’s mind already traveling toward Constantinople.