Charles II

Charles II is a recalled and politically charged figure in the novel rather than a character shown acting in the scenes supplied here. Gwynplaine invokes him while condemning monarchy before the peers, connecting the king to a painful episode in the history of Lord Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie and the woman Lord David Dirry-Moir calls his mother. The exchange turns a general attack on royal power into a personal disclosure.

Appearance in Gwynplaine’s speech

Gwynplaine names Charles II during his address to the House of Lords, after citing poverty and the harshness of the criminal code. He presents the king as the successor of another ruler he condemns and uses the episode to argue that kings are not morally elevated by their rank. His attack belongs to a wider indictment of taxation, privilege, and laws that burden the poor for the benefit of the powerful.

The immediate context sharpens the speech’s claim to firsthand knowledge. Gwynplaine says that the previous day he had seen a prisoner subjected to torture; elsewhere in the sequence, Hardquanonne is shown enduring the punishment after refusing to answer questions. Gwynplaine draws on that experience as evidence against the legal order, then turns from present injustice to the conduct he attributes to Charles II. The passage does not identify Charles II as responsible for the contemporary torture.

Connection to Lord Linnæus and Lord David

In the speech, Gwynplaine alleges that a woman loved by his father, Lord Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, gave herself to Charles II while Lord Linnæus was dying in exile. Lord David Dirry-Moir immediately takes the reference as an insult to his mother. When Gwynplaine repeats that the story is true, David’s response makes the woman’s identity central to the confrontation and prompts Gwynplaine to recognize a family connection between them.

The exchange presents the relationship through accusation and reaction rather than through a separate scene involving Charles II. David’s protest establishes the personal stakes of Gwynplaine’s words, while Gwynplaine’s recognition turns the insult into a moment of discovery. Charles II’s place in the episode is therefore inseparable from the conflict between the two men and the history of the woman they share a connection to.

Royal power and the limits of the account

Gwynplaine’s denunciation places Charles II within a sequence of rulers he condemns, but the evidence distinguishes this allegation from the crime that shaped Gwynplaine’s childhood. The order to sell the child and remove him from inheritance is attributed to James II, not Charles II. The speech’s wider attack on kings does not make Charles II responsible for that act.

Charles II functions as a name through which the novel links private injury to public authority. Gwynplaine’s condemnation is politically broad, but David’s intervention exposes its intimate consequence: a charge about royal conduct is also a charge concerning David’s mother. The resulting confrontation makes the past consequential in the present without supplying an independent account from Charles II or resolving the allegation beyond the characters’ exchange.