Goya, despite his position as court painter, didn't flatter his sitters as was usualy for an artist painting royalty. On the contrary, he portrayed the ugliness and vulgarity of the king and his family so vividly as to produce the effect of caricature.( It seems that the Royal family didn't cotton on, because Goya stayed on for many years as Court painter.)
While Goya enjoyed court life, he was actually a revolutionary who would have been very critically of institutions such as royalty. The message he was trying to send was that the thought that the royal family were a collection of "bumbling idiots"
