King Victor and King Charles was the second play written by Robert Browning for the stage. He completed it in 1839 for William Macready, who had staged Strafford two years before, but Macready rejected it as unsuitable and it was never performed. It was published in 1842 as the second number of Bells and Pomegranates.
The subject of the play is the strange incident in 1730–32 in the Kingdom of Sardinia in which the elderly king, Victor Amadeus II, first abdicated in favour of his son Charles Emmanuel III, and then after months of ever-increasing complaints unexpectedly demanded to be restored. He was imprisoned until his death a year later. Browning's treatment is based on 18th century sources which cast Victor as deliberately deceptive, but he goes further to create a secret history in which Charles is exonerated from all charges of cruelty.
The play is in four acts and has only four main characters: Victor, Charles, Charles's wife Polyxena, and the minister D'Ormea. Charles suffers from an inferiority complex. He has always been regarded as the dull son, forced into the role of heir after the death of his abler brother. The theme is the anxious and misguided loyalty of Charles to his father and his refusal to believe that he could have been deceived. Despite his disappointment, his virtuous behaviour finally leads to a reconciliation.
Plot
The setting is the Castle of Rivoli. There are no scene changes.
The Duchy of Savoy, comprising Savoy proper and Piedmont (today in France and Italy respectively), has been united for three centuries. Over the past decades of Victor Amadeus's rule, the House of Savoy has prospered. It has successfully defended itself against its powerful enemies during the War of the Spanish Succession, after which a treaty permitted the acquisition of Sicily in 1713. Sicily was exchanged for Sardinia in 1720. Victor, the duke turned king, has solidified his power and is now one of the most absolute monarchs in Europe.
1730
Part I
Polyxena is helping Charles to rehearse state speeches when they are visited briefly by the disdainful D'Ormea. Charles believes that he has been summoned to the palace to be disinherited in favour of an illegitimate son. Polyxena suggests that the King's mistress, Marchioness Sebastian, may have influenced Victor in that direction after he was widowed in 1728.
Part II
Victor soliloquises while carrying the regalia. Having foolishly made secret, incompatible deals with Austria and with Spain, he fears that a reconciliation between the two great powers will lead to the revealment of the deception, and justify the annexation of his kingdom. Nothing short of a change in ruler will extricate Sardinia from this situation, he believes. However, he has little faith in Charles, and expects to take power back from his weak son as soon as a renegotiation is complete and the coast is clear.
When Charles enters, Victor is startled by his tone of accusation, and wonders if D'Ormea (who expects to be made scapegoat) has told him anything. Victor places the crown on Charles's head and announces an intention to abdicate. He will take the name Count Tende and spend his retirement in Chambéry, 150km away in the extreme northwest of Savoy. Charles is somewhat angry when he learns that Victor has secretly married his old mistress, but the guilt over his earlier suspicion is so great that he refuses even to consider the possibility that his father has ulterior motives for stepping down. When the baffled Polyxena suggests that all may not be as it seems, he turns away from her.
1731
Part I
Nearly a full year has passed. The royal pair take the waters at Evian; but Polyxena returns home, as she thinks, a day ahead, and is greeted at the palace by D'Ormea, who informs her that Victor is returning to Turin, probably to take back the crown. Charles arrives back just minutes after her, before they have time to decide on a course of action. The king believes he has foiled the rumours, and cleared his father's name, by making a formal treaty with Austria and Spain; he sent word of this to Chambéry from Evian. He still refuses to believe that his father wants to depose him; Polyxena's insistence during the past few months has alienated him from her. At first he will not even look at D'Ormea's documentary evidence, and he is dismissive of it when he reads it.
Victor enters the palace alone, and is surprised by his son while wandering about his old chamber. At first the old man is tactful, but gradually his indignation over his son's failure to adhere to his policies causes him to demand openly the return of his crown.
Polyxena and D'Ormea enter and remonstrate with him, having overheard. Victor quickly dissembles, modifying the end of his rant to make it appear that he had been complaining about his allowance and living quarters.
Part II
Word comes to D'Ormea that Victor has approached several people for help in regaining his crown. Deeply worried, D'Ormea resorts to deception. He summons Charles to tell him that his kingdom is in imminent danger of being invaded by France, as a result of demands made by the old king for French intervention in his dispute. Victor, he claims, plans to ride thither within the hour. D'Ormea presents Charles with a list of people whose movements should be watched, and a shorter list of those to be arrested. He is alarmed when Charles, calling his bluff, orders all on both lists to be arrested—including Victor. But Charles has an entirely different plan in mind. Polyxena, guessing that his resolve to continue as monarch is wavering, tries to persuade him that his duty is to defy his father, keep his crown, and accept the burden of the world's adverse judgment as a form of self-sacrifice.
Victor is seized and brought to the palace. He is defiant, but when Charles places the crown on his head he is devastated by the filial piety the gesture represents. Fully reconciled with his son, Victor takes his old seat and passes away.
Reaction
Macready wrote in his diary, in the entry for 5 September 1839: "Read Browning's play on Victor, King of Sardinia—it turned out to be a great mistake. I called Browning into my room and most explicitly told him so." Arthur Symons described it as "the least interesting and valuable of Browning's plays, the thinnest in structure, the dryest in substance."[1] Browning himself called it a "very indifferent substitute" for another play he had hoped to publish.[2]
It was once generally accepted as historical fact that the abdication had been a ruse. However, modern historians believe that Victor sincerely intended to retire and that his subsequent behaviour was the result of a stroke, and attendant mental illness, possibly prompted by distress over the prison-like environment at Chambéry. Another former explanation, the supposed ambition and scheming of his mistress-turned-wife, was probably a cover story put out by authorities to divert blame and halt further speculation.[3]
Notes
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Victor Amadeus II was the head of the House of Savoy and ruler of the Savoyard states from 12 June 1675 until his abdication in 1730. He was the first of his house to acquire a royal crown, ruling first as King of Sicily (1713–1720) and then as King of Sardinia (1720–1730). Among his other titles were Duke of Savoy, Duke of Montferrat, Prince of Piedmont, Marquis of Saluzzo and Count of Aosta, Maurienne and Nice.
Charles Emmanuel III was Duke of Savoy, King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from his father's adbication on 3 September 1730 until his death in 1773. He was the paternal grandfather of the last three mainline Kings of Sardinia.
Victor Amadeus III was King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from 20 February 1773 to his death in 1796. Although he was politically conservative, he carried out numerous administrative reforms until he declared war on Revolutionary France in 1792. He was the father of the last three mainline Kings of Sardinia.
Victor Emmanuel I was the Duke of Savoy, King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from 4 June 1802 until his reign ended in 1821 upon abdication due to a liberal revolution. Shortly thereafter, his brother Charles Felix ascended the throne as the new King of Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel was the son of King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia and his wife, Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain. In 1789, he married Maria Theresa of Austria-Este, with whom he had seven children, including the future Empress of Austria. He was the King of Sardinia during the Napoleonic Wars, where he regained Piedmont after Napoleon's defeat in 1814.
Charles Felix was the King of Sardinia and ruler of the Savoyard states from 12 March 1821 until his death in 1831. He was the last male-line member of the House of Savoy that started with Victor Amadeus I of Savoy, and caused the line of Victor Amadeus I's younger brother Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano to seize the throne after Felix's death.
The House of Savoy is an Italian royal house that was established in 1003 in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, the family grew in power from ruling a small Alpine county northwest of Italy to absolute rule of the Kingdom of Sicily from 1713 to 1720, when they were handed the island of Sardinia, over which they would exercise direct rule from then onward.
The Duchy of Savoy was a territorial entity of the Savoyard state that existed from 1416 until 1847 and was a possession of the House of Savoy.
Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours was born a Princess of Savoy and became the Duchess of Savoy by marriage. First married by proxy to Charles of Lorraine in 1662, Lorraine soon refused to recognise the union and it was annulled. She married Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy in 1665 who was her kinsman. The mother of the future Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia who saw the elevation of the House of Savoy to kings, she styled herself as Madama Reale or Madame Royale. She acted as Regent of Savoy from 1675 in the name of her son Victor Amadeus II, who was her husband's successor. Her regency officially ended in 1680, but she maintained power until her son banished her from further influence in the state in 1684. She left a considerable architectural legacy in Turin, and was responsible for the remodelling of the Palazzo Madama, which was her private residence. At the time of her death she was the mother of the King of Sardinia as well as great grandmother of two other kings, Louis I of Spain and Louis XV of France.
Anne Marie d'Orléans was Queen of Sardinia by marriage to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. She served as regent of Savoy during the absence of her spouse in 1686 and during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain was Queen of Sardinia by marriage to Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia. She was the youngest daughter of Philip V of Spain and Elisabeth Farnese. She was the mother of the last three mainline Kings of Sardinia.
Princess Polyxena of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg was the second wife of Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Piedmont whom she married in 1724. The mother of the future Victor Amadeus III, she was Queen of Sardinia from 1730 until her death in 1735.
Victor Amadeus of Savoy, 3rd Prince of Carignano was an Italian nobleman who was Prince of Carignano from 1709 to 1741. He was the son of Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, Prince of Carignano and his wife, the Maria Angela Caterina d'Este.
The Villa della Regina is a palace in the city of Turin, Piedmont, Italy. It was originally built by the House of Savoy in the 17th century.
Louis Victor of Savoy, 4th Prince of Carignano headed a cadet branch of the Italian dynasty which reigned over the Kingdom of Sardinia, being known as the Prince of Carignano from 1741 till his death. Upon extinction of the senior line of the family, his great-grandson succeeded to the royal throne as King Charles Albert of Sardinia, while his great-great-grandson, Victor Emmanuel II, became King of Italy.
Anne Christine of Sulzbach, Princess of Piedmont, also called Christine of the Palatinate, was a princess of the Bavarian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire and first wife of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne of the kingdom of Sardinia. She died during childbirth at the age of 19.
Maria Vittoria of Savoy was a legitimated daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia, first king of the House of Savoy. Married to the head of a cadet branch of the House of Savoy, she is an ancestor of the kings of Sardinia and of the Savoy kings of Italy.
Eleonora Maria Teresa of Savoy was a Savoyard princess, the eldest daughter of Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia and his second wife Polyxena of Hesse-Rotenburg. She died unmarried.
Princess Maria Felicita of Savoy was a princess of the House of Savoy, the third daughter of Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia and his second wife, Polyxena of Hesse-Rotenburg.
Anna Carlotta Teresa Canalis di Cumiana was a playwright and the morganatic wife of Victor Amadeus II, King of Sardinia. She was created Marchesa of Spigno.
Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Aosta was a prince of Savoy. He was born in the reign of his father Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia.
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