Gerbino

Gerbino is the celebrated Sicilian prince whose attempt to rescue the Tunisian princess he loves ends in the deaths of both lovers. His story turns on a collision between desire and a royal pledge: though he knows that King Guglielmo II of Sicily has promised the King of Tunis that the princess’s ship will pass unmolested, Gerbino attacks it all the same. The princess is killed before he can reach her, and his grandfather later has him beheaded rather than break faith with a fellow king.

Identity and Reputation

Gerbino is the son of King Guglielmo’s son, who died before his father, making Gerbino the king’s grandson. His grandfather raises him carefully. As a young man, Gerbino becomes renowned for prowess and courtesy, and his reputation travels beyond Sicily. In Barbary, then tributary to Sicily, his fame reaches the daughter of the King of Tunis. The tale introduces him first through this reputation: before the two have ever met, his deeds and character have become vivid enough in another person’s imagination to inspire love.

The princess’s beauty and worth are equally renowned, and their reputations travel in the opposite direction, reaching Gerbino in Sicily. He is inflamed by what he hears and longs to see her. The story thus makes fame more than a public measure of princely standing: it is the medium through which the lovers discover one another, and the force that sets their relationship in motion before they can meet face to face.

Love by Report and Secret Exchange

Unable to approach the princess openly, Gerbino asks friends travelling to Tunis to tell her of his love and bring back news. One friend carries the message under the pretext of showing her women’s trinkets as a merchant might. He tells her of Gerbino’s passion and declares that the prince and all that belongs to him are at her command. She receives the news gladly, says that she loves him in return, and sends one of her most precious jewels as a token. Gerbino accepts it with great joy.

Through the same messenger, the lovers exchange further messages and costly gifts and make plans to see one another. Those arrangements never come to fruition. When the King of Tunis gives his daughter in marriage to the King of Granada, she grieves at the prospect of being separated from Gerbino and would flee to him if she could. Gerbino, too, is deeply distressed. He begins to consider seizing her if she happens to travel by sea, turning a private longing into a contemplated act of force.

The Attack on the Ship

The King of Tunis has learned something of Gerbino’s love and purpose. Fearing the prince’s courage and strength, he seeks an assurance from King Guglielmo that Gerbino and others will not interfere with the voyage to Granada. The old king, unaware of the love affair and misunderstanding the reason for the request, freely gives his assurance and sends his glove as its token. The King of Tunis then prepares a splendid ship at Carthage for his daughter’s passage.

Knowing that the ship is about to sail, the princess secretly sends a servant to Palermo to tell Gerbino that she will soon be on her way to Granada. Her message makes the coming voyage a test of his vaunted courage and declared love. Gerbino knows that his grandfather has given the King of Tunis a pledge, but he goes to Messina, hastily arms two light galleys, and mans them with proven fighters. He sails to the coast of Sardinia and waits for the princess’s ship, which appears after only a few days.

Gerbino addresses his companions by appealing both to their experience of love and to their appetite for plunder. The lady aboard the ship is the prize he seeks; its riches, he says, may belong to the men who fight for them. His companions are already eager for the assault, and they row toward the ship with trumpets sounding. Gerbino’s own purpose is singular, but the expedition also serves his crew’s desire for booty.

The ship cannot escape for lack of wind. Its defenders refuse to surrender, invoke the breach of faith represented by the attack, and display King Guglielmo’s glove as proof of his guarantee. The princess’s escorts kill her before Gerbino can carry her away, then cast her into the sea. Their act turns the attempted rescue into an irreversible loss. Gerbino boards the ship despite the missiles, kills many of the defenders in a fury, and has his men take what they can from the burning vessel. The victory brings him neither the woman he sought nor a living captive: he retrieves only her body from the sea.

Death and Narrative Significance

Gerbino steers back toward Sicily with the princess’s body and buries her honorably on Ustica, the small island opposite Trapani. He weeps over her at length and returns home profoundly grief-stricken. The burial gives the interrupted love a final act of care, but cannot undo the violence that has destroyed its possibility. The lovers had exchanged tokens, gifts, and plans, yet never gained the meeting they hoped for.

The King of Tunis sends ambassadors dressed in black to complain to King Guglielmo that his pledge has been violated. The Sicilian king sees no way to deny the justice of their demand. Although his barons plead with him to relent, he condemns Gerbino and has him beheaded in his presence. He chooses, as the tale presents it, to have no descendants rather than be regarded as a king who breaks his word. Gerbino’s royal identity therefore deepens rather than shields his predicament: the authority that raised him and the code of pledged faith that governs his grandfather become the means of his death.

As a tragic love story, Gerbino’s episode contrasts the intimate bond formed through reports and secret gifts with the public obligations of rulers. His courage is not in doubt, but the assault that might have proved it cannot recover the princess and violates the guarantee made in his name. The story closes by joining the lovers in a violent end: she dies aboard the ship, and he dies by his grandfather’s command, without either having tasted the fulfillment of their love.