King Portico, a highly dignified and scrupulously correct monarch, is generally worried that the newspapers might print something embarrassing about the royal family, especially the king's eccentric daughter, Princess Toto. Prince Doro, to whom Toto was betrothed in infancy, is reported to have been eaten by cannibals, so Portico has chosen the "highly respectable" Prince Caramel to receive Toto's hand. Caramel is already three days late for the wedding, and King Portico fears that he will not arrive at all. Prince Doro arrives after ten years shipwrecked "on a savage shore." He hopes that Toto still loves him. King Portico says that Doro cannot marry Toto, since, if he isn't dead, he has placed the king "in a very awkward and ridiculous position." He tells Doro that he hasn't lost much, since Toto is not only absent-minded but excessively romantic: "her head is filled with foolish ideas about Gypsies, robbers, actors, pirates, paving commissioners, Red Indians, and outlandish people of that sort," and her fancy has now fallen on the notorious brigand Barberini.