The Borgias: My Two Cents

Cast

Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander VI
François Arnaud as Cesare Borgia
Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia
Joanne Whalley as Vannozza dei Cattanei
Lotte Verbeek as Giulia Farnese
David Oakes as Juan Borgia
Sean Harris as Michelotto Corella
Simon McBurney as Johannes Burchart
Aidan Alexander as Gioffre Borgia
Colm Feore as Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II)
Derek Jacobi as Orsino Orsini
Ruta Gedmintas as Ursula Bonadeo (fictional character)
Elyes Gabel as Prince Cem
Montserrat Lombard as Maria
Emmanuelle Chriqui as Sancia
Vernon Dobtcheff as Cardinal Julius Verscucci (fictional character)
Bosco Hogan as Alessandro Piccolomini (later Pope Pius III) (real counterpart: Francesco Piccolomini)
Peter Sullivan as Ascanio Sforza
David Lowe as French Ambassador

The story thus far:  On the eve of the death of Pope Innocent VIII in 1492, a fierce political battle rages inside the Vatican walls over who will become the next pope. The papacy has long been the exclusive domain of a handful of super-powerful and ancient Italian families, so outsider Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia seems like a long shot. But the staid, pious Italians vastly underestimate the ambitions of the wily, rapacious Spaniard. Once ensconced on the throne, Rodrigo uses all of his power and influence to turn the papacy into a dynastic possession for his children, while his rivals plot with all their political might to unseat him.


Rodrigo takes a new mistress, much to the dismay of Vanozza. While Pope Alexander installs his beloved new mistress Giulia in the late Cardinal Orsini’s palace, his enemies are gathering against him. Pope Alexander VI appoints Cesare Cardinal of Valenica, allies with Sforza as Vice-Chancellor of the Curia, and seeks security by creating 13 new cardinals sympathetic to his rule. Della Rovere makes inquiries while Michelletto is firmly embraced by the Borgias as their loyal servant assassin.

My thoughts:  I was without cable for over a week because I was behind on my bill, so I spent the weekend catching up on all the shows that I missed.  Thanks to Time Warner Cable Entertainment on Demand, I discovered that I could watch the 1st 2 episodes of Showtime's new series The Borgias. I've got to be honest here, I absolutely loathed and despised The Tudors with every fibre of my being.  So I didn't have high hopes for The Borgias, until I discovered that the director Neil Jordan and Jeremy Irons were involved. Still, I wasn't going to run out and spend the money to have Showtime added to my already expensive monthly cable bill. But since I could watch the first episodes for free, I thought I would give it a try.

The series started off with a bang. We are informed that it is the year 1492 (hey, I wonder if anything else interesting happened that year?) and it is time for that new reality TV series 'Pick a Pope' starring Rodrigo Borgia. Will Rodrigo be able to bribe enough cardinals to have his dreams come true of being the next Pope? The tension mounts as the votes slowly turn into Rodrigo's favor. Yes! Success has been achieved and Rodrigo Borgia is now Pope Alexander VI. Wasn't that exciting? Weren't you just on the edge of your seat. Not!

I can't really put my finger on what is that made The Borgias so thoroughly unengrossing despite Showtime's pimping out the series as being about the original Mafia family (PSB said the same thing about the Medicis). Perhaps it's because the general audience knows so little about The Borgias compared to say The Tudors which had a built-in recognition factor. Who doesn't know about Henry VIII and his Six Wives? The Borgias not so much. And the series does little too illuminate the mysteries of this family.  So far, all I learned in the first 2 episodes was Rodrigo Borgia really wants to be Pope (Check!), Cesare Borgia doesn't want to be in the church but head of the Papal armies, oh, and he has a thing for his sister Lucrezia, and Lucrezia wants to be painted with a seahorse and wear a really pretty white veil with pearls to her father's popefication ceremony (Check! and Check!). Rodrigo comes across as ambitious but bloodless, Cesare creepy with greasy hair and Lucrezia is just very, very blonde (she kind of looks like a human version of My Little Pony). Oh and they're Spanish, and nobody likes them because they eat paella instead of pasta? I don't know, I'm at a loss here.

The biggest weakness in the series is Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia.  In countless interviews, Irons has mentioned that he thought he was wrong for the role because Borgia was a noted voluptuary who loved to eat, drink and fornicate. He was also a large man, built more like Gerard Depardieu than Irons slim frame.  He plays Borgia more like an ascetic than a man of the flesh. I totally bought his claim in the first episode that he was going to renouce his mistress and try to be a good Pope. What I didn't buy was the scene were Guilia Farnese comes to confession, and we're supposed to believe that he's so overcome by lust for her that he installs in a palace next door with a secret entrance so they can be together. I could see them spending time playing chess but not having sex romps all over the place. He's great at playing Borgia's ambition but little else.  Rodrigo should dominate the series, but in the first two episodes, Irons seems like he's sleepwalking through his scenes. I almost fell over laughing when he told Cesare that killing people was not an option. Oh, really? But briberty is A-OK?

It's a sad commentary when the most vibrant character in the series is Cesare Borgia's monkey as Carlyn over at Raucous Royals so wittily pointed out. (I have it on good authority however that Mr. Monkey was a bit of a diva, wanting his bananas peeled, pooping all over the place, which was why he was fired. But don't weep, he has a new job as the monkey on Upstairs, Downstairs.)

Unfortunately I will not be watching the next few episodes of the series unless I can watch them for free. I will say on the plus side that the costumes and sets are absolutely beautiful, and as far as I can see, unlike The Tudors, period appropriate.

My verdict:  A big dud of a series with characters that have no redeeming qualities. Unless the producers find someway to make us care about what happens to these people, it's just not worth watching.

Other views:

NY Times article and Review
TV Fanfic

Scandalous Women welcomes Sarah Bower, author of SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome historical fiction author Sarah Bower to the blog. Sarah is the author of the new novel SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA, which was published by Sourcebooks Landmark earlier this month.  What perfect timing with Showtimes new series The Borgias premiering next month. SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA is one of the best historical fiction novels that I've read this year. It is a meaty character study of the Borgia's seen through the eyes of an outsider, a young jewish woman named Esther who converts to Christianity. Here are what the critics are saying:

The sheer grandeur of the papal and Ferrara courts, and the spectacle of the Borgia and Ferrara siblings' rivalries and revenges form a glittering take on one of the most notorious families of the Italian Renaissance. (Publishers Weekly )


Bower brilliantly merges history with politics and convincing characters to draw readers into a lush and colorful tapestry of Renaissance life... This powerful piece of fiction ranks with some of the finest of the genre. 4 1/2 Stars, Top Pick of the Month


When I heard you had kindly invited me to guest on your blog, I naturally took a look at it and your headline quote from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that ‘well behaved women don’t make history’ set me thinking about the two women who play central roles in my new novel, SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA. Violante, the narrator, is a largely fictional character, though she was inspired by a real lady-in-waiting to Lucrezia Borgia who is described as a conversa, a converted Jewess. Lucrezia herself is, of course, a major historical figure, and one notorious for her bad behaviour, although whether or not this made history is open to question and depends on how you define ‘making history’.

There are those whose actions directly affect the course of history, for example Lucrezia’s contemporary, Caterina Sforza. From the time of her first marriage, Caterina was surrounded by ineffectual men, but she didn’t let them keep her down, taking up the command of her own troops in defence of her cities of Imola and Forli against a series of attackers, including Lucrezia’s dangerous brother, Cesare. She held out against Cesare longer than any others on whose states he had designs; even when he threatened to kill her children, who were in his ‘protective custody’, she responded by climbing on to her battlements, hiking her skirts up to her waist and shouting at the much younger and possibly disconcerted Cesare that he could go right ahead as she had the wherewithal to make more children. (He didn’t, you will be relieved to hear but did, briefly, become her lover. No children ensued.) Defiant to the last, she later attempted to poison Cesare and Lucrezia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, by sending him a letter which had been laid against the body of a plague victim in order to impregnate it with plague bacilli. The attempt was discovered and Caterina was exiled to Florence.

For others, however, like Violante and Lucrezia herself, defying convention is more a matter of survival, and it is that survival which alters history’s course. Violante’s history, in my novel, stands for that of many thousands of Spanish Jews who chose to convert to Christianity rather than lose everything when Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492. Perhaps, to us, this looks like a cowardly compromise, but that is both to underestimate the depth of hostility to the Jews in the Catholic Europe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and also to misunderstand the nature of many of these conversions. Many of the conversi paid only lip service to their adopted religion, and kept up their Jewish practices in secret. So deep did this compromise run that, when I was researching SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA, I spoke to people of Sephardic descent who had been brought up as Roman Catholics yet observed customs such as lighting candles on Friday night, without knowing why they did this until they discovered their families’ origins in the Spanish Jewish diaspora. The notorious Spanish Inquisition was originally established in order to root out these ‘fake’ conversions, even though its remit ran much wider in later years.

The women who presided over converso households were ‘behaving badly’ whichever way you look at it. On the one hand, they had publicly renounced their faith and ethnicity. On the other, they were secretly upholding traditions which were against the law. Yet, without their courage and ingenuity in navigating a course between the demands of the Christian state and their traditional religious and cultural observance, the Sephardic culture, with its Ladino music and glorious cuisine, would have been lost to us and our lives today would have been the poorer for it.

With her third husband, Alfonso d’Este, Lucrezia Borgia had five children who lived to adulthood, including Cardinal Ippolito d’Este II, the architect of the great Villa d’Este and its gardens in Tivoli, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Alfonso and Lucrezia were, if not in love, contentedly married for seventeen years.

When her father died suddenly in 1503, and Cesare, himself dangerously ill at the time, lost his powerbase in the Romagna and was sent to Spain to answer charges of murder, Lucrezia’s own position was precarious. As she knew only too well, inconvenient spouses could be disposed of in a variety of ways, from divorce to murder to execution for adultery, yet, after a famously misspent youth, she ensured her survival, and her contribution to history, by behaving well. By sheer force of will, she transformed herself from the bastard daughter of a Pope with a reputation of her own for sexual depravity, into a revered and respected duchess.

Visiting Ferrara during my research, I was struck by the contrast between the Lucrezia of legend, of Victor Hugo’s play and Donizetti’s opera, and the plump, motherly woman whose image, accompanied by her children, is everywhere in that city. In Ferrara she is remembered as a devoted wife and mother, a distinguished patron of, among others, Ariosto and Pietro Bembo, and as a gallant defender of her adopted home from an army led by Pope Julius II during the War of the League of Cambrai. She helped to organise troops and artillery, and at one stage pawned her jewellery in order to purchase ammunition for the city’s cannon. On many occasions she was left in charge of Ferrara while her husband was away on business in Venice and France, and gained a reputation as an efficient administrator and a wise and compassionate dispenser of justice.

What sets Lucrezia apart from well behaved women who fail to leave their mark on history is the fact that her conduct was not, it seems to me, determined by subservience to her husband but by her shrewd political intelligence and the courage she displayed in carrying on when she had lost everyone she loved. The Borgias were not one of the great traditional Roman dynasties such as the Orsini or the Visconti. They were minor Catalan gentry who emigrated to Italy, rose rapidly and fell just as fast. They were self-made people and Lucrezia was, perhaps, the most successfully self-made of all. Cesare proved unable to reinvent himself and died as he had lived, recklessly and violently, but his sister was a woman for all seasons, whose capacity to adapt and survive helped her to leave a lasting mark on posterity.

Thanks so much for stopping by Sarah.  You can find out more about Sarah at www.sarahbower.co.uk or purchase SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA at Amazon.com or BN.com

Lucrezia Borgia, Passionate Poisoner or Virtuous Victim

Say the name Lucrezia Borgia, and you get an immediate reaction, even if they don't know the whole story, they know that Lucrezia Borgia was though to be scandalous in some way. Some will tell you that she poisoned her lovers with a special ring and her families political enemies, as the Borgia's clawed their way to the top in Renaissance Italy. Others consider the Borgias to be the first crime family, even deadlier than the Medicis in Florence, for their ability to eliminate anyone who got in their way. But was Lucrezia Borgia as bad as the histories have made her out to be? Or was she an innocent pawn used by her families to cement alliances and to raise money to wage war?

Many recent biographies have taken a revisionist tact with Lucrezia. While it's certain that her father Rodrigo also known as Pope Alexander IV and her brother Cesare were ambitious men, who were more than willing to murder their enemies, Lucrezia seems to have been a good woman who was subject to the whims and power mongering of her relatives.

The Borgia family weren't even Italian. They were of Spanish origin, originally from Valencia, the family used the Valencian language amongst themsevles for privacy. Rodrigo moved to Italy when his uncle Alfons de Borja became Pope Callixtus III in 1455. Rodrigo studied law at Bologna, and after his uncle's election as pope, was made a bishop, a cardinal and then finally vice-chancellor of the church.

All the while however, despite the fact that priests were supposed to be celibate, he kept a mistress Vanozza dei Cattani, the mother of Cesare, Giovanni, Gioffre, and finally Lucrezia who was born in 1480. She was twelve when her father was elected Pope Alexander VI after the death of Pope Innocent VIII. Her father, due to his great wealth, succeeded in buying the needed number of votes, in order to take the papal seat.

Lucrezia was apparently a good-humoured, good-natured girl with blonde hair, who enjoyed wearing fine clothes and good conversation. She bathed daily, an eccentricity in the 16th century when people were more apt to take a bath perhaps once a month if even that. Not much is known about her early childhood but she must have been well-educated because her father, during his absences from the Holy See, had no problems leaving her in charge.

Renaissance women were still subject to the whims of men. They were controlled first by their parents, and then passed over to the control of their husbands. They had no political power, and most of those who were heiresses found their estates given over to their husband's control. Women who did not marry were either forced to take vows in a nunnery, or were forced to live with male relatives on sufferance. Women were also discouraged from participating in the arts and sciences. For the most part, wives of powerful men were relegated to cooking, sewing and entertaining.

Lucrezia was married for the first time at the tender age of 13 to a member of the power Sforza family. Her father and brother had already made and broken two bethrothals as they strived to make the best match that would further their interests. Italy, during the Renaissance, was made up of feudal city states like Ancient Greece. Princes, Kings and Dukes jockeyed for position while other countries tried to take advantage of the constant state of chaos by invading.

By all accounts, Giovanni Sforza was a nervous, lackadaisical sort, he may even have been spying for Milan against the Borgias. After awhile the Borgias no longer needed the Sforzas in their quest for even more power. The Pope wanted new, more advantageous political alliances, so Giovanni had to go. There is a possibility that he may have ordered Sforza's execution. The story goes that when Lucrezia was informed of the imminent murder of her husband, she warned him and he then fled Rome.

Instead of execution, The Pope decided to just have Lucrezia's marriage anulled instead. Sforza refused. He accused Lucrezia of sleeping with both her father and her brother. While Cesare may have been a little too fond of his sister, there is no evidence that anything untoward was going on. More likely it was just sour grapes on Sforza's part since he was asked to lie and say that the marriage with Lucrezia had been unconsummated. Sforza refused even thought the Pope offered him all of Lucrezia's dowry to agree. The Sforza family put pressure on Giovanni to agree. With no choice, Sforza signed the confession of impotence and the annulment, and then proceeded to blacken his former wife's name.

While Lucrezia awaited the annulment of her marriage, she may have begun an affair with her father's messanger, Pedro Calderon known as Perotto. Pedro like Rodrigo Borgia was from Spain, and a favorite of the Pope. However he was later found murdered, his body floating in the River Tiber. Was he killed because he dared to not only love Lucrezia, but to father a child with her? All that is known is that the child was named Giovanni. Some suspected that the child was fathered by her brother, others by her father. Adding to the confusion in 1501, a papal bull was issued recognizing him as the Pope's son! The second bull was kept secret for a number of years and it was finally revealed, it stated that the child was Cesare's! Who was the mother of Giovanni, was it Lucrezia or someone else? No one knows for sure but the rumors had been started and would follow Lucrezia for the rest of her life.

Lucrezia's second marriage was to Alfonso of Aragon, another political marriage, as her father sought to ally himself with the house of Naples. Like Lucrezia, he was the natural son of Alfonso II. Handsome and intelligent, he aroused the jealousy of her brother Cesare, who had been thwarted in his desire to marry the daughter of the current King of Naples. While married to Alfonso, she began to gather a court of intellectuals around her. By all accounts they were highly devoted to one another. But once again, her husband had outlived his usefulness. Now married to a French princess, Cesare had allied himself with the King of France, Louise XII, who claimed the duchy of Naples which was in the hands of Alfonso's family. This time, instead of another annulment, Alfonso was murdered on her brother's orders. Again, Lucrezia had fallen in love with her husband, and once again she was left broken-hearted.

No matter how much she may have loved him, Lucrezia's first loyalty was always to her family. Still by the age of 19, she had already two marriages behind her. At the age of 21, she was married to her final husband, Alfonso d'Este, son of the Duke of Ferrara. The d'Este family were the rulers of one of the most important duchies in Italy, with a lineage that far surpassed the Borgias. Alfonso initially was reluctant to marry Lucrezia given the rumors swirling around her. The Pope however persisted and offered the d'Este family a dowry of over 200,000 ducats and the a threat that if he were refused, war might ensue.

Within two years of her marriage to Alfonso, her father died, and Cesare was ruined. However, Lucrezia flourished in Ferrara. She gave birth to six children, and proved to be a respectable and accomplished duchess, the antithesis of her scandalous reputation. She was a generous and gracious patron of the arts, attracting visits by all of the greatest poets and arts of the time. After a time, she became known as "the good Duchess."

She was even left to administer the affairs of state with her brother-in-law whenever Alfonso was away, and given the duty of heading a court for citizens' petitions. The historians of Ferrara gave her the highest praise for her beauty, modesty, virtuousness, and understanding. If you to to the web-site for Ferrara, Towards the end of her life, she devoted herself to works of piety and charity. She died in 1519, after a difficult pregnancy with her last child, Isabella Maria. She was 39 years old.

The worst that can probably be said about Lucrezia is that she was a devoted to her family, despite their rather rampant ambition, cruelty, and selfishness. Still, the image of Lucrezia Borgia, with her poison ring, lives on.