Review: The Borgias ~ Siblings ~ And A Bit Of MythBusting

It seems that after Showtime aired the third episode of The Borgias Season 3 that this blog has had quite a few hits searching for things like "were the Borgias really incestuous?" and even odder requests searching for members of the Borgia family without any clothes on. Considering as how the searches brought people to older mythbusting posts; I thought I would take the opportunity to do another one. And thus, I shall be killing two birds with one stone today ~ a review of 3 x 03, and a Borgia mythbust! I must apologise for my lack of a review for 3 x 02; we can blame Da Vinci's Demon's for that one. However, enjoy!

Rumours have filtered down to us throughout the centuries that the Borgia family enjoyed a closer than close relationship. Anti Borgia propaganda has told us that Pope Alexander VI enjoyed incestuous relations with his daughter Lucrezia; but the rumour that has stuck is the one that Cesare Borgia was involved with his own sister. We even have tales that the famous Infans Romanus was actually the child of Cesare and Lucrezia as well as a whole heap of secret bulls stating that the father of the child is Cesare's and in another bull that it's Pope Alexander's. This episode belongs to a post entirely of its own and so I shan't go into it here in too much detail. The important thing to take from this is that the rumours stated that the child belonged to Cesare and Lucrezia. Did it? We don't know. Personally, I hold little store in the rumours and am more of the opinion that the child belonged to Cesare and an unknown woman. But again, this will be spoken about in more depth in a future post.

Holliday Grainger doing her best lion impression

"It seems only a Borgia, can truly love a Borgia"

The main origin of the incest myth is really rather simple. In 1493, Lucrezia married Giovanni Sforza - it was a marriage of politics, Pope Alexander VI believed that having the Sforza's as his allies would help him in his political endeavours and it was a way of thanking the Sforza family for their help in electing him as pope. However, Pope Alexander soon grew tired of the Borgia/Sforza alliance, it was doing nothing for him politically and he needed more powerful allies. Annulment proceedings began and of course, Giovanni Sforza refused. Lucrezia was sent to a convent, and it is said that Giovanni begged the Pope to have his wife returned to him. Alexander refused on the basis that the marriage had never been consummated. Sforza was asked whether this was true or not, and he of course replied that this was untrue; that he had known his wife an infinite number of times and that the only reason a divorce was on the cards was so the Pope could keep his daughter for himself. Add this onto how obviously close Lucrezia and her brother were; and the flames began to spread. 

There are stories throughout the Borgia history of how close Cesare and Lucrezia were. One of my personal favourites is when he rode to Ferrara when she was sick and sat talking to her, holding onto her foot. 

There are thousand other anecdotes I could quote from the smallest up to the moment of Cesare's death where Lucrezia locked herself in a room, crying out her brother's name. But again, this could take up a whole post on its own or even a series of posts (there's an idea!) and so that will have to wait. At any rate, I hope from a brief overview I have managed to put across that the whole "borgiacest" anomaly is based entirely on rumour with no substantial evidence to back it up. And indeed in all my years of researching the family, I have never read a credible report of any such rumours; just propaganda from anti-Borgia factions. Were the stories true? We will never know, not without being handed a hand written note from either Cesare or Lucrezia stating that this actually happened. And what's the likelihood of that? It is down to us as researchers and historians to draw our own conclusions...

Francois Arnaud making Cesare look all broody again.

These two are big fans are the sex eyes. Have been since season 1

And this is where I come onto the latest episode of The Borgias. This episode has been the talk of the "fandom" ever since it was announced that Neil Jordan was going down the incest route and I have to say, I really didn't want to watch it. I will say now though, that the actual incesty bit is very short and actually very well done, not seedy at all. That whole part of the storyline, whilst based on little more than rumour, actually ended up being very interesting and I felt ever so sorry for poor Alfonso D'Aragona. He discovers that his marriage into the Borgia family isn't going to go as well as was first planned, and after discovering Cesare's political manoeuvres already coming into play he abandons his new wife on their wedding night. Already finding that her love for her brother is getting more and more intense, she finds herself drawn to his chambers where the two of them spend the night together. Lucrezia echoes the words she spoke to him in the first season, "I shall never love a husband as I love you, Cesare", by telling him that for that night at least he will be her husband.  

........

Poor Lucrezia; she believes that everyone is out to get her. Then her brother comes in and snogs her face off.

Can I see why Jordan went down this route? Yes, I certainly can. It certainly makes for riveting viewing and a story arc that is quite frankly, rather mind blowing. Mix that in with stellar acting from the amazing cast, beautiful costumes and the most mind blowing sets I've ever seen; The Borgias is certainly one of the best shows on television at the moment. What I can't quite forgive however, despite the fact that this is a historical fantasy, is the complete mess that the script makes of the history. In the first episodes alone I counted more inaccuracies than I could shake a stick at; but when the incest angle was brought into play I honestly felt physically unwell. Neil Jordan always said that he would never go down that route because it wasn't a story about incest. But it seems he caved and went down the routes that the fans of the show wanted. What makes it worse as well is that there are those fans of the show who honestly believe that the history is true, and refuse to pick up a book because they believe everything that they have seen on The Borgias. I've lost count of the amount of snotty emails and comments I've had because the things I write on the family aren't what are on The Borgias. 

So therefore I must be lying...

It's my hope that the latest episode brings more people here so that they can find out a little bit of background to what the actual Borgia family were like and the history that inspired the show. Because if I'm honest the real history is much more juicy than what's shown on the series. At any rate, I shall keep watching Season 3 as I'm intrigued to see where they'll go with the story arc; and I'm always impressed by the dynamics of the actors. Is it worth a watch if you're new to the history of the Borgia family? Yes. But I'd recommend reading a good biography of the family first of all.

It's that broody face again

Caterina Sforza and Cesare Borgia. Enemies until the end.

Arnaud is a REALLY big fan of the smoldering broody look.

Having just been abandoned on her wedding night, Lucrezia makes her way towards her brother's chambers.

"You shall be my husband tonight, Cesare"

Further Reading

Sarah Bradford - Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy

Sarah Bradford - Cesare Borgia: His Life and Times

Christopher Hibbert - The Borgias and Their Enemies

Mary Hollingsworth - The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty

Paul Strathern - The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior

Raphael Sabatini - The Life of Cesare Borgia

The Borgias - Season 3, Episode 1: The Face of Death

Caterina Sforza - Gina McKee

I'm going to be honest here and say then when I heard what the plans were for The Borgias, Season 3; I was a little loathe to even start watching it. And I'm still loathe to carry on watching the series. However, I have watched both the first and second seasons and, if I must admit it, enjoyed them immensely despite their ah...not so historically accurate storylines. Now then, the creator of the show, Neil Jordan, has said throughout that he wouldn't go down the incest route. But then the promotional videos game out showing the whole "Only a Borgia can love a Borgia" and "It's a game of want, and wanting" thing; and the Cesare/Lucrezia shippers went nuts and it seems that Jordan had decided to cater to the rumours that have been fed down to us throughout the centuries. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in this, and it really put me off the idea of watching the new season. But then I thought, "hang on a minute, why don't I review them so I can do a little mythbusting?" And so here we are, the first episode has aired, and here I am to share with you all a little review. I'm going to try my best to be as balanced as possible, and I'll try my best not to get ranty. If I get ranty, I apologise.

The first episode, aptly named "The Face of Death", picks up where season 2 left off. I'm going to try my best not to spoil the episode for everyone, but obviously given how one must review the content of the episode...that might be a little difficult. At the end of Season 2, Giuliano della Rovere had organised for Pope Alexander VI to be poisoned and the tasting boy (and agent of Rovere's) managed to succeed in getting cantarella in the Pope's wine. Of course, being the taster the boy drank from the wine himself and died a horrifically painful death while the Pope started spitting blood and passed out. Now thinking that the Pope is on his deathbed, the entire consistory gathers around his deathbed. They begin to scheme over who will replace him, Della Rovere being the usual sneaky piece of work. Alas, when Cesare realises that it was Dela Rovere who engineered the plot; poor Della Roverre realises that actually he'd be better off siding with the Borgia family. Now enemies begin to surround the Borgia family and Cesare must do his best to protect his family from those, like Caterina Sforza and her assassin Rufio, who want both the papacy and the lives of them all.

The cardinals gather, just incase the Pope decides to pop his clogs.

Cesare tries to attack Dela Roverre

Regarding the historical accuracy of this episode - there was absolutely no accuracy to this at all. Whilst the Borgias had many enemies and doubtless would have dealt with many plots, Dela Roverre never conspired to poison the Pope and indeed the Pope was never poisoned with cantarella. Caterina Sforza also never sent  her assassins into the house of Vanozza Cattanei; the only assassination attempt she made towards the Pope was actually by sending letters that had been left to fester next to the body of a plague victim! Regarding Dela Roverre, he was always plotting for one way or another to get his hands on St Peter's chair but more often than not he'd run away from Rome at the first sign of trouble. He certainly wasn't taken into custody in such a way, nor did he escape in such a way only to run into Cesare's blade. I honestly wonder where the scriptwriters got half of these ideas because so many of them are just so unlikely it's laughable. Of course as the series goes on, I'm sure there will be many more points I can make about the accuracy of such plot points. And I'm sure you'll all be treated to a bit of a rant when the incest storyline gains a foothold. But we shall cross that bride when we come to it.

In any case, there are a few good points to the episode as well. As always, and as has been proven in previous series', the acting is top notch from the cast. Stand outs for me so far are Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and Colm Feore. With Arnaud's Cesare you can really get a sense of how Cesare has grown - in the previous scene we see him as a cleric determined to be rid of his robes, and giving into the darkness of his soul. In this first episode we can really see how dark he is beginning to become, how important family is and how much he loathes the idea of religion. Grainger seems to have also really grown into her role as Lucrezia although I am sure we will be able to gain further ideas of this as the series goes on. And with Feore, you can really see how Cardinal Dela Rovere will grow to become the infamous Papa Terrible. Yet again the costumes and set designs are amazing, and the cinematography is second to none. Whilst I may dislike the lack of accuracy in the scriptwriting, I can't deny that the rest of the production is always stunning to look at.

Lucrezia

Arnaud is rather good at making Cesare look broody

Cesare and Pope "Irons" Alexander

Cesare and Dela Roverre face off outside St. Peter's.

So what do I think so far? Not massively impressed but that may have something to do with the fact that I really have something against how a drama can be called "historical" if the only historical element is the name of a famous Renaissance family and the rest of the plot is so loosely connected to said family that it can't really be called historical at all. We'll see how the rest of the series goes but if I'm honest I'm not holding out much hope, especially when one of the main storylines is being said to be the incestuous relationship between Cesare and Lucrezia. As I said, we'll see how it goes. I can only hope that the other storylines get less ridiculous as the series goes on and that the acting and cinematography retains it's already excellent reputation. All in all, not as bad as I thought but still enough to make me disappointed enough not to watch the rest of the series.