Rousseau's imaginary ceremony depicts Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, towering over a group of past and present heads of state, including King Edward VII, Tsar Nicholas II, and Kaiser Wilhelm II–figures who never would have all gathered in real life. In the background children representing France's "young" colonies dance around the statue of Etienne Dolet, the sixteenth-century thinker executed for his unorthodox religious views.
