Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and family-in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia-in order to succeed.Ĭesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest-though increasingly unstable-weapon. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church.
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