Crystal Clear

OKAY GUYS I AM HERE


Good luck with reading my post without falling asleep. It's long, and it's detailed.





Your whole post is excellent, so brace yourself - I have replied in as much thorough detail as humanly possible.


I am totally okay with the Season 3 finale. I truly am.

Lucrezia is Cesare's, and he is hers.

THAT is my ideal ending, and that's the way it is staying.

Do you hear that, Neil Jordan?


Rumor has it that Lucrezia's son in reality could have been fathered by Cesare.

...Or her father. But for the love of all things, let's not go there.

And that sounds like a great fanfiction you've started

Anything has to be better than the utter that is formally known as The Borgia Apocalypse.



I love TV characters who are shown as protective lovers. Cesare never acted like a protective brother; he acted like a protective potential lover. And surrogate father to Giovanni. ALL the time, with Lucrezia. And his anger towards Alfonso proved it. Cesare has had enough of him, and he believes Lucrezia will always be lacking something if she's not with Cesare. And she will.


Their performances were at an all-time high in this scene. I think a lot of it has to do with the actors' relief that they FINALLY get to go there with the C/L intimacy. It shows in their acting with each other, as if to say: Well, it's about time!!!



I said this to Alex the other day - C/L remind me of Cathy and Heathcliff in so many ways Their bursts of passion mixed with their tragic forbidden affection and their siblings relationship and their dislike of other people, in general


Cesare and Lucrezia remind me of the great Gothic romances. Sexy yet doomed. I'm kind of a sucker for those type of relationships.


Yes, and he's in a fit of frustration, because he's finally had the guts to show Lucrezia his TRUE non-brotherly love for her, but it's all too late because she's due to be married, so he knows they're the epitome of bad timing, which sucks


Absolutely I think he just can't take it anymore, the pain of knowing that the woman he loves is marrying another man... Not a brute this time, but someone who would love her and take care of her, someone who isn't Cesare, and it KILLS him, and he doesn't believe Alfonso is truly worthy of her, so it's a huge explosion of feelings about wanting to be the man she marries... It's all so sad, really.


YESSS, that is my favorite part when she leans in desperately to kiss him, and he pulls her back possessively, because he wants to maintain eye contact to see every part of her reaction to him... Oh I LOVED that.

I am SO, SO grateful for how the sex scene wrapped up with a look of ecstatic joy written all over Francois and Holly's faces, because for me, that defined it as a scene of making love rather than just having hot sex; what makes it special is that the actors made the decision (or maybe the writer did, I'm not sure) to play that scene by having them keep looking into each other's eyes the whole time, like they're TERRIFIED the night will end, like they've been waiting for this moment their WHOLE lives it was beautiful


THANK YOU and I maintain that The Prince would have been the perfect episode for another C/L love scene, and that Neil Jordan had Cesare be too much of a stubborn ass by rejecting her desperation for even a kiss.


They shipped Cesare and Lucrezia as much as we did, it was there for everyone to see since episode one. Let's all be grateful to them, because I think their enthusiasm woke Neil Jordan up to the reality that he CANNOT ignore C/L becoming lovers. It is destiny and it is chemistry all wrapped up in one beautiful forbidden love story.



Francois was amazing in that scene, because Cesare was trying SO hard to keep his emotions under wraps around Lucrezia in that episode, but it all comes rushing to the surface and he can't contain it anymore; he loves her so much yet he can't be with her in a public way, and now he's part of something that's forcing her to degrade herself, and therefore he hates HIMSELF.

I read two things into her "I want you" declaration: 1) she wants him there, desperately, NEEDS him there as both a punishment for him and to look into his eyes when... Well, we all know what happens and 2) in a broader sense of the term, she will only EVER want one man - Cesare. She's trapped in a marriage to a man she will never love in the way she loves Cesare... Which Season 1 truly predicted (think back to episode 3 of that season).


I was dreading that scene at first because I figured it was going to be a typical thing where Cesare is left to drown his sorrows over watching Lucrezia be with her husband.

BUT... Dare I say, it's one of the most daring, complex and erotic scenes EVER on TV... Because it was ALL ABOUT CESARE AND LUCREZIA. Seriously. Alfonso is not even there in the eyes and mind of Lucrezia. She is re-living her night of passion with Cesare right there with Alfonso. There's a reason why you never see Alfonso's face in that sex scene - because it has nothing whatsoever to do with him. In those moments, Lucrezia (who had been suffering with having Alfonso be on top of her and having to direct him etc) is finally experiencing true pleasure, through the eyes and soul of her brother. Not her husband. Those moments where the camera is switching back and forth between Cesare and Lucrezia, the panting and pleasure in their faces, it's truly THEIR sex scene. She's imagining him, they're looking into each other's souls.

I clap my hands to Guy, the writer of the ep, because he handled that quite perfectly. And the director, of course, by focusing truly on C/L when she's reaching climax.







I think that's one of the few times I've ever not enjoyed Cesare, because he's all about restraint in that break-up scene. He's holding back, stilted and cold. And that's the point - he's deliberately trying to turn Lucrezia away from him - this is something that Francois has addressed many times; Cesare was putting her happiness above his own in that scene. It didn't mean that he didn't want her, or that he didn't enjoy their night together... It's that it's all becoming too REAL, and Cesare is in no position to take advantage of her (he ISN'T, because she wants it as much as him, but as the older brother, that's the way he views it...) and let's remember that Cesare has given his word to Rodrigo the same that Juan did about finding a wife in Naples to marry ~ for the good of the family ~

Cesare's whole life is mapped out for him, which is tragic in retrospect - the only thing he can genuinely choose is Lucrezia, and the only episode where we saw the two of them have complete control over their own destinies was Siblings, the scene where they finally make love. This is how you can tell that the writers have truly pinpointed C/L as the True Love pairing of everyone on the show. Theirs is the only relationship that isn't bound by treaties and family honor. The power of Cesare/Lucrezia is that their relationship is about CHOICE and FREEDOM.


Some fans don't like their Relics scene, but I'm in the minority because I LOVED it

The scene was a work of genius - it used the backdrop of a beautiful firework display for romantic lighting and to symbolize sparks of passion between C/L, everything was done METAPHORICALLY to let the audience know that Cesare and Lucrezia are still all about each other... Marriages to other people haven't changed anything. Cesare's words of denial in 3x04 didn't change anything. It's still the two of them, walking amongst the crowds wrapped up in each other, with people looking on suspiciously, and Lucrezia declaring

"If I married a thousand times, it would NEVER be the right man"

and Cesare basically declaring the same, saying that love is not a part of his marriage. He loved Lucrezia full well knowing that marriage is a contract and his heart is only bound to her.

And yes, I agree with you that Lucrezia was rubbing it in his face about her love for Alfonso - it's too forced, too random, it contradicts the pain on her face when she was forced to share a bed with him in 3x04.



He blows me away and I swear, Francois only ever acted so seductive in his scenes with Holly. He did that on purpose to show the audience who Cesare is TRULY in love with.

Wait, WHAT? Are they releasing new stuff?
I would do anything for the release of a C/L love scene from The Prince I swear, that scene between them where she was talking about the "overwhelming" feeling was DRIPPING with heat and I think Cesare is an idiot for not dropping all his plans for even ONE night with her


The season of "so when are they gonna do it, already?" as we generally know it.
As was Season 2.

I had no issue with the brother/sister relationship because Francois and Holly were deliberately playing their first scene with sizzling sexual tension, so with that in mind, it doesn't even occur to me most of the time that Cesare and Lucrezia are siblings.
Think of all their touches and glances and nudges and long pauses
They always acted like best friends who are secretly in love with each other.
Forbidden lovers, if you will.

Please share your thoughts with us on Season 1 are there any moments where it really occurred to you, wow there is DEFINITELY something between them that is worth developing romantically? I can think of several.


I can imagine, Alex I remember being confused, because it felt like I was reading bad fanfiction. I couldn't get my head around the fact that the same man who had brought closure to the show by having Cesare FINALLY declare himself to Lucrezia as her man in the final moments, would write a script that spits in the face of everything that their relationship stood for.




That's why I initially thought I had read the wrong thing. It basically points the middle finger at everything we had come to know about L/C as people and as a couple.


The antagonism from Lucrezia towards Cesare (who is clearly still desperately in love with her) was too much to bear. I don't know how I made it to the end of the script


I could understand it on some level if the show had actually depicted her as someone who truly loved her husband, but NO - this is the same woman who declared to her brother "I'm tired of my husband" and "the only thing that never tires me is YOU, CESARE" I feel like Jordan has no sense of continuity, which was proven when Lucrezia was wailing over Alfonso's death when just moments earlier, she couldn't wait to divorce him, but WHATEVER, Neil


I think Neil Jordan knew exactly what he was doing. It was a rebellion thing, he was venting his frustration about the show's cancellation through the script, and he knew he could destroy the characters and not have to answer to his critics anymore.

I have to say, as a HUGE fan of the movie Interview With The Vampire directed by Neil Jordan (starring Tom Cruise in his most impressive role ever), I was SO disappointed, and cannot believe the difference in quality of THAT movie compared to APOCALYPSE. He put so much effort into that movie, and yet he gives us a script claiming to be a true send-off the Borgia family which brings them to shame.