Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies

Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies appears as both a familiar presence at court and the sovereign of a monarchy approaching its end. In Don Fabrizio’s audience with him, affable talk about family gives way to an attempt to obtain political intelligence; later, Fabrizio remembers the King not simply as an ineffective ruler but as a man struggling beneath the kingdom’s administrative burden. His brief appearances and recollections make the old regime personal without making its passing seem like a guarantee of change.

Identity and Court

Ferdinand receives Don Fabrizio in a small, deliberately plain study, where papers in white, yellow, and blue cover a modest desk. The room’s religious images and royal portraits share space with coloured prints of little-known Neapolitan saints and sanctuaries; here, the administration of the kingdom reaches its final stage, the King’s signature. The scene sets the mechanics of sovereign power against the disorder and worn grandeur of the wider court.

The King is already standing when Fabrizio enters, apparently to avoid being seen rising. His pallid, heavy face is framed by fair side-whiskers; beneath a rough military jacket, purple trousers show conspicuously. He steps forward with his hand out, bends as if to receive the customary kiss, then refuses it. The gesture turns ceremony into an awkward, personal exchange. His strong Neapolitan accent and friendly address reinforce the informality, even as the audience remains an encounter with royal authority.

Ferdinand’s audiences with Fabrizio had taken place at Caserta, Capodimonte, Portici, and elsewhere. Their route through splendid rooms with shabby décor, dirty passages, and neglected stairs ended in waiting rooms crowded with police spies and petitioners before admission to the royal presence. The contrast between imposing architecture and visible decay makes the court itself an image of the Bourbon monarchy’s condition.

Family Cordiality and Political Suspicion

The King first asks after Fabrizio’s daughters, singling out Concetta, his goddaughter, and suggesting that she be shown to the Queen during a future visit. His manner is warm enough to make the audience resemble a family conversation. He then praises Fabrizio’s scientific distinction, while adding that science is admirable so long as it does not attack religion. The shift reveals a ruler whose personal welcome also carries an expectation of deference to the monarchy’s religious boundaries.

Ferdinand next asks what people in Sicily think of Castelcicala, the island’s Lieutenant-General. Fabrizio, who has heard no good opinion of him from either Royalists or Liberals, answers cautiously and avoids supplying useful intelligence. The King’s expression darkens when he recognizes that Fabrizio will not act as an informant. He prepares to dismiss him by invoking the burden of governing the kingdom, then restores the friendly tone by inviting him to bring Concetta to meet the Queen. The movement between sovereign and friend is not merely a change in manners: it shows how courtly intimacy can be used to solicit information and soften a rebuff.

Ferdinand also raises Tancredi Falconeri, whom Fabrizio has described as absorbed in women and cards. The King loses patience and reminds Fabrizio that, as Tancredi’s guardian, he is responsible for him; he warns him to keep an eye on the young man’s neck before ending the audience. In this exchange, personal concern and authority overlap: the King addresses Tancredi through the obligations of his uncle and guardian.

The Monarchy in Fabrizio’s Recollection

Leaving the court, Fabrizio is depressed by the King’s plebeian familiarity and by the police presence. He wonders what will replace the monarchy, considering the Piedmontese ruler, Victor Emmanuel II, and imagining that the change might amount to a different dialect rather than a different political order. He even considers a republic, but recoils from the prospect of becoming merely Signor Corbera. His reaction places Ferdinand within a broader uncertainty: the old sovereign is compromised by a failing system, yet his successor does not automatically represent a new social reality.

At the Donnafugata vote, Fabrizio wears the same black frock coat he had worn two years earlier when paying his respects to Ferdinand at Caserta. He recalls that the King had died in time not to witness the day on which the plebiscite would seal his incapacity. But Fabrizio revises that judgment as he remembers Ferdinand trying to hold back floods of useless documents. The image suggests not only administrative failure but also a belated recognition of the human burden behind the King’s unattractive appearance and embattled rule.

Change of Regime and Significance

Ferdinand is absent from the plebiscite itself, but his death and the old monarchy’s collapse shape the scene. Fabrizio casts his vote for union, while the announced result at Donnafugata is 512 votes in favour and none against. The transition is therefore presented through the contrast between the familiar monarch whose court Fabrizio once visited and the new political order whose local unanimity is conspicuously absolute.

Fabrizio later describes himself as belonging to an old ruling class inevitably compromised with the Bourbon régime, a generation caught between the old world and the new. That judgment places Ferdinand’s reign within the history of a class and political order that cannot simply be carried intact into the next state. Yet Fabrizio’s earlier suspicion that power may change its language without changing its habits remains unresolved. Ferdinand’s significance lies in this double portrait: a ruler whose personal gestures are vivid and sometimes solicitous, and the human face of a monarchy whose passing does not, by itself, promise Sicily a different future.