King Charles the Old's Restraint and Marriage Match for Isotta

Charles the Old’s connection with Isotta the Blonde is a story of attraction deliberately turned away from possession. At a supper in Neri degli Uberti’s garden, the king becomes enamoured of the twin daughters he has just seen fishing, serving, and singing; rather than claim Isotta, he arranges her marriage to Messer Guglielmo della Magna. The relationship matters not as a courtship between the two, but as a test of whether royal desire will override hospitality, justice, and self-command.

The Encounter in the Garden

The sisters enter the garden during a supper hosted by Neri, a gentleman whose hospitality the king has accepted. Each is about fifteen, and the scene presents them first through a carefully coordinated performance. One carries nets and a pole; the other brings the pan, firewood, oil, a trivet, and a torch. They wade into the fishpond, catch fish with the pole and net, and toss some to the servant to cook. The king and his companions watch as the fish are brought to the table, where the sisters playfully cast them back and forth with the king before the meal is served.

When the sisters leave the water, their wet linen garments cling closely to them. The king looks on intently and feels desire awaken. He cannot decide which twin pleases him more, because they resemble each other so closely. Neri identifies them as Ginevra the Fair and Isotta the Blonde. The names distinguish them, but the king’s first response is to their likeness: his love for Ginevra draws him toward Isotta too. The account gives no separate conversation, courtship, or declaration between Charles and Isotta; her place in the relationship emerges within his attraction to the pair.

The sisters return later in fine gowns and bring fruit to the table. They then sing a canzonet, whose sweetness further enchants the king. Their exit grieves him, but it does not end his attention: concealing his passion, he cultivates a close association with Neri and repeatedly visits the garden, ostensibly on other business, to see Ginevra. Isotta remains part of the desire that the king cannot disentangle from his fascination with her twin.

Desire and the Test of Hospitality

Charles eventually tells Guy de Montfort that he intends to take both sisters from their father. Guy answers as an honourable counsellor, reminding the king that he is in a newly gained kingdom, among people he does not know, and occupied with serious affairs. More pointedly, Neri has received him generously and shown him his daughters in confidence. To seize them would turn a host’s trust into an opportunity for royal coercion.

Guy also connects the proposed act to the history of the conquest: the violence Manfred committed against women helped open the way for Charles to gain the kingdom. If Charles now wronged a man who had welcomed him, political victory would be stained by the very kind of abuse that had helped make his rule possible. The rebuke makes the relation with Isotta more than a private matter. The king’s desire puts his obligations as guest and ruler in conflict with his appetite, while the sisters’ family and marriages remain exposed to the consequences of his rank.

A Marriage Arranged, Not Pursued

Guy’s words strike Charles’s conscience. The king acknowledges the difficulty of overcoming his appetites and promises to prove by his actions that he can master himself. Within a few days, back in Naples, he decides both to remove the occasion for dishonour and to repay Neri for his hospitality. Instead of taking either daughter for himself, he resolves to arrange their marriages and treat them as though they were his own daughters.

With Neri’s agreement, Charles provides the sisters with magnificent dowries. He gives Ginevra the Fair to Messer Maffeo da Palizzi and Isotta the Blonde to Messer Guglielmo della Magna, both described as noble cavaliers and great barons. The king consigns the women to these husbands with deep personal chagrin, a detail that preserves the cost of his restraint: he does not cease to desire, but chooses not to turn desire into possession. The account records the marriage arrangements and dowries, not Isotta’s response to the match or any later life with her husband.

The Meaning of Charles’s Restraint

The relation is shaped by a sharp contrast between looking and taking. The garden scene makes the king’s attraction vivid, while Guy’s intervention names the obligations that attraction threatens. Charles’s answer is not withdrawal from Neri’s household or punishment of the sisters, but a public act that honours their father and establishes their marriages. His authority, which could have made the desire coercive, is redirected into provision and alliance.

Isotta’s significance in this episode also depends on her resemblance to Ginevra: Charles says, in effect, that loving one has drawn him into loving the other. Yet the ending refuses to let that entanglement dictate the sisters’ fate. Both are married to other men, and Charles goes into Apulia, where continued exertion helps him break the chains of his passion. The relationship thus closes not with a union between king and woman, but with the king’s restraint made visible in the choices he makes for Isotta and her sister.