#and then feeling even guiltier about giuliano's death because giuliano WARNED HIM

[markantonys]

let me tell you about giovanni de’ pazzi and beatrice borromei. giovanni was francesco and guglielmo’s brother and beatrice was his wife. beatrice was from a super rich family and didn’t have any siblings, so she was all set to inherit a huge amount of money when her father died. the pazzi family would then get even richer than they already were.

you know who just couldn’t have this? lorenzo de’ medici. who proceeded to enact a new law limiting female inheritance in some way (i forget the details) that prevented beatrice from getting her dad’s money and instead ensured that it passed to her male cousin instead (who iirc was a friend of the medici).

and like, the timing of this was not subtle at all so everyone knew that lorenzo had passed this law SPECIFICALLY to target beatrice and by extent the pazzi, who were rightfully pissed about this. and this whole ordeal is actually considered one of the major causes of the pazzi conspiracy. i’m not saying The Pazzi Did Nothing Wrong but like. they were definitely provoked a lot more than the show would have you believe. even giuliano reportedly gave lorenzo shit for this stunt because he thought he was pushing his luck too far with the pazzi. i bet lorenzo was real sorry when he remembered this after the conspiracy yikes

footnote to this story: giovanni de’ pazzi, who was NOT involved in the conspiracy, was nevertheless imprisoned in 1478 because lorenzo was like “if he’s a pazzi he’s a traitor” and sent a whole bunch of them to jail. in 1480, according to italian wikipedia, beatrice tried to break her husband out of jail but she was caught and imprisoned herself. giovanni died in prison a year later and idk what happened to beatrice, but the other pazzi men who’d been imprisoned were eventually released and sentenced to exile instead, so i choose to hope that she was released along with them

tldr: the entire pazzi family was so ride or die for each other and i love it