King Charles’s Marriage Arrangement for Ginevra and Isotta turns a king’s dangerous desire into an act of self-restraint. After seeing the twin daughters of his host, Neri degli Uberti, at a private garden supper, King Charles the Old considers taking them for himself. Guy de Montfort reminds him that such an act would betray Neri’s hospitality and stain the justice of his rule. Charles instead provides splendid marriages for both women, relinquishing the object of his desire and making self-conquest the story’s measure of magnanimity.

Political and personal background

The episode is told by Dioneo as a story of a valiant king who acts without compromising his honour. Its political setting reaches back to King Charles’s victory over Manfred, after which the Ghibellines were expelled from Florence and the Guelphs returned. Neri, a Ghibelline gentleman, left Florence with his household and much money, seeking refuge under Charles’s protection. He settled at Castellamare di Stabia, where he bought an estate among olive, walnut, and chestnut trees and built a comfortable house beside a garden.

The garden was not merely a backdrop to the king’s appetite. It embodied Neri’s effort to make a home in exile: he laid out running water, fashioned a clear fishpond in the local style, and stocked it with fish. When Charles came to rest at Castellamare during the hot season and heard of the garden’s beauty, he requested a private supper there with four companions. Neri welcomed him generously, despite belonging to the political party Charles had defeated.

The supper and the king’s desire

Neri’s hospitality shaped the evening’s spectacle. The supper was laid beside the fishpond, where Guy de Montfort sat at the king’s side and Neri at the other. The meal was served quietly and with care. Then Neri’s twin daughters entered: Ginevra the Fair and Isotta the Blonde, each about fifteen years old. One carried hand-nets and a long pole; the other brought a frying-pan, firewood, a trivet, oil, and a lighted torch. They waded into the pond to catch fish, which were cooked and served at the table.

The scene combines practical work with playful display. The sisters cast fish toward the servant and onto the table, where the lively catch amused the king and his companions. When the girls came out of the water, their fine white garments clung to them; Charles watched them closely and found them alike in beauty and bearing. Neri identified them as his daughters, but explained that he could not afford to marry them. They later returned in fine gowns carrying silver platters of fruit and sang a song before respectfully asking leave to depart.

Their departure did not end the king’s preoccupation. Charles kept visiting the garden under other pretexts, chiefly to see Ginevra, whose beauty had captivated him; because the sisters were so alike, his desire extended to Isotta as well. At last he told Guy that, seeing no other way to achieve what he wanted, he was resolved to take both women from their father. His desire thus threatens more than private impropriety: it would turn the host’s welcome into an opportunity for coercion.

Guy de Montfort’s rebuke

Guy answers not by treating the king’s desire as harmless, but by measuring it against the duties of his position. Charles is still securing a recently won kingdom among people he does not know, Guy points out, and is already burdened with grave affairs. To pursue Neri’s daughters in those circumstances would be unworthy of a magnanimous king. More pointedly, Neri has received Charles with a trust that makes the proposed seizure a betrayal: he has shown the sisters openly because he believes his guest to be a king, not a predatory wolf.

Guy also recalls the political history that makes the king’s conduct especially consequential. The violence Manfred committed against women, Guy argues, helped open Charles’s way into the kingdom. If Charles now uses royal power to take the daughters of a man who has hospitably entertained him, he risks repeating the very kind of abuse that his victory displaced. Neri’s Ghibelline allegiance cannot excuse such treatment; justice, Guy insists, must not depend on which party a host belongs to. He closes by distinguishing victory over an enemy from victory over oneself: Charles’s conquest of Manfred is a great glory, but mastering his own appetite would be greater.

The marriages and their meaning

Guy’s words strike Charles’s conscience because he recognizes their truth. He acknowledges the difficulty of overcoming desire, yet promises to demonstrate through action that he can master himself as well as others. On returning to Naples, he decides both to remove the opportunity for dishonour and to reward Neri for his hospitality. With Neri’s agreement, he provides substantial dowries and arranges Ginevra’s marriage to Maffeo da Palizzi and Isotta’s to Guglielmo della Magna, both noble cavaliers and great barons.

The choice costs Charles what he had most wanted: he gives the sisters to husbands rather than claiming either for himself, and accompanies the decision with evident pain. He then goes into Apulia, where, through continued exertion, he subdues the passion that had entangled him and remains free of it for the rest of his life. The story’s resolution therefore has two connected parts: the sisters receive advantageous marriages, and the king changes his course rather than allowing his authority to dictate theirs.

Dioneo’s conclusion insists that the act’s significance depends on the desire Charles forgoes. Arranging two marriages might seem a small deed in itself; doing so while enamoured, and without taking anything from the women he gives in marriage, makes it a test of royal restraint. The episode sets the spectacle of power beside the quieter achievement of refusing to abuse it. The king’s decisive victory is not the earlier defeat of Manfred, but the self-command that prevents hospitality from becoming a means of seizure.