#cessre borgia

[borgialucrezia]

"I have not tried to speak with the Duke, not having anything to tell him that is new, and the same things would bore him. When he knows that a man brings him nothing but words he never gives him an audience." — Niccolo Machiavelli

[borgialucrezia]

obviously, i love when tv shows resort to adapting defamatory rumors about the borgias, in fact it makes stuff spicier for good television! but i have that pet peeve and it is the false narrative with zero factual basis that i keep encountering while reading biographies about the house of borgia that the scholars really need to fuck off with them, and it's the whole irritating narrative that juan is the pope's favorite son, and cesare is consumed by jealousy towards him. which is total bullshit when cesare in fact received so much affection and appreciation from the pope as much as juan received (if not more than juan) cesare was the one who has always been consistently by their father's side and enjoyed immense popularity in rome, even among the artists who hailed him as the most handsome man in italy, and machiavelli was all over him. basically cesare was the renaissance's main prince. so there's nothing that indicates that cesare is jealous of juan over literally anything, and it's just the biographers being overly dramatic about him by giving him the "from zero to hero" trope (read maria bellonci's 'the life and times of lucrezia borgia' because she dives deep into this topic)

and no, cesare didn't hate juan. it's quite the opposite! his letters to his younger brother are full of tenderness, guidance, and fraternal love. it's another borgia famous rumor that needs to die down in biographies.

let's take sarah bradford (the author of 'lucrezia borgia: life, love, and death in renaissance Italy' and cesare borgia: his life and times) for example, and how she deliberately cut the part where cesare signs his letter to juan with "dal vostro fratello che vi ama com se stesso." translated as "from your brother who loves you as himself" because of her unnecessary haterism towards juan since she likes hyping cesare at his expense.

she also manipulated a document about the ambassador who visited cesare. here's a snippet from her book:

the actual translation from the document (praising both brothers) :

at this point, i'm convinced that if sarah bradford (and authors like her) didn't burst blood vessels for one minute by projecting her one-sided beef towards juan onto cesare with her unfair, incorrect statements of him she might start getting chills and have a stroke

that's it for now! i'm planning to make a masterpost about stuff like that because there are a lot of infamous rumors that some biographers tend to resort to, which is truly exhausting lol