Nikki K

Well, Rodrigo is right though. Juan needs help and compassion. And like a true masochist he wants it from the two people who are hardest to please: His older brother and his father.

BL.Arinna_1982

Yeah, but he wants also to prove himself in front of them. That's not the way he's gonna do it.

Nikki K

Well, his character always gets in the way of proving himself. He has the best intentions but is too weak to follow through most of the time.

ring of fire

But I'm afraid they will make up some stupid reason so CL doesn't happen. Still if CL doesn't happen, Cesare won't kill a person that makes his dear sister so happy.

Nikki K

Perhaps they go completely off the rails with it again (like with Juan and Paolo) and have Rodrigo give the order to kill him or something.

BL.Arinna_1982

^ Exactly my point!

Nikki K

Source: i'm ****ing with you cutie q

BL.Arinna_1982

Ah Cesare... I think the Dark Prince is here.

Nikki K

I'll miss the red. I really will.


Source: http://****yeahborgia.tumblr.com/

Nikki K

Somebody on tumblr "complained" that depending on which biography you read the relationships between the siblings, especially CL is not what we want to make it by pushing for a more physical relationship. All I was thinking was, yeah, you know - who knows what was and what wasn't happening, that is so not the point, the point is good storytelling and what the audience wants to see and something that at least according to some records of the time was considered a possibility so as not to make this completely historically inaccurate. /rant

Back to François:


Source: Why is the rum gone?

^^^this picture always makes me totally crack up because it reminds me so much of this: "Bad Babysitter" by Princess Superstar - so bloody fitting.


Source: People and Places

ring of fire

I think that's because a lot of people feel uncomfortable with a relationship like that and they want things to be perfectly "normal". We don't know exactly what happened and the show could go any route. But I won't believe for a second that Lucrezia was that Mary Sue version some people want to believe. Because of her circumstances and her family I'm sure she was no saint. She cheated on two of her husbands (some letters even prove it) and some people seem to overlook that and talk about her like she was this pure innocent person.

Also most people don't want to believe incest was a lot more common back then and the rumors have to come from somewhere. I'm sure there were a lot of crazy rumors surrounding the family but why the CL relationship was one of the stronger ones? People must have seen something that made them believe it.

Nikki K

As far as the cheating goes - are we talking Francesco Gonzaga? Kate Simon made a good point in her book that their letters were what would be phone-sex today. They barely had the time to meet in private - he was imprisioned by the Venetians for so long and then his final stages of syphilis prevented intimacy as well as her constant pregnancies by her husband. I think the letter exchange with Pietro Biembo (sp?) was mainly chivlary/minesong/courtship. The thing with Peretto is not actually proven. So yeah... that doesn't mean that there weren't others. I need to re-read this but one of the poets that courted Lucrezia in Ferrara wound up dead somehow and I think I read that conincided with one of Cesare's visits.

I do agree with you though that - no matter the truth, I do not want to think of Lucrezia as a helpless victim. What I do think and I tried to express when writing fic is that thought - perhaps because of how it depicted on both recent shows - that she has moments of cunning and then moments of an extremely guilty conscience that in The Borgias!Lucrezia leads to melancholy (like when she said she'd rather have her innocence back) or in Borgias!Lucrezia to moments where she deeply wishes to be closer to God but then turns away again, a bit desperate that he doesn't seem to take her offerings but quickly focusing on the wordly future again.

I agree that rumours usually come from somewhere - perhaps they were a lot more touchy-feely than the average Italian family deemed appropriate but then who knows. As you said it was more common - as we saw in season one with Ascanio Sforza and his cousin (where Rodrigo feigned shock). It is known that the ruler of Perugia bedded his sister and was pretty open about it (even Della Rovere turned a blind eye because he kind of needed him as backup). On the other hand it sometimes was used as malicious humour take Della Rovere - it appears that he always was more interested in men but then he had this experimental phase with Lucrezia Normanni which lead to his only daughter Felice. Yet people (and I've seen that on wikipedia) still buy into misinformation that he had three daughters while in effect Gulia and Clarice were Felice's daughters with Giangiardano Orsini and therefore his granddaughters.

Again, I agree - rumours usually have some truth about them, even the malicious ones or perhaps especially those and CL was something that was very often mentioned, a lot more than Lucrezia/Juan or Lucrezia/Rordgio (the latter something I do not want to believe, mainly because I do not see anything consensual about this, whereas CL were at last age wise not that far apart and there wasn't the "you have to please daddy" component involved, which makes me sick. Plus Rodrigo had Giulia who was almost as young as Lucrezia, he might have had Vanozza on occasion and a multitude of nameless young females at his disposal that Adriana De Mila procured for him, so I do not see why he should focus on Lucrezia that way) or Vanozza/Cesare (which I have read about but I cannot really draw a clear picture of this and where it is coming from).

One thing that people do not understand is that people at this time were very different, even their personal motivations were different and everything had to be done in a precise manner and there was a lot of etiquette involved - one reason why most of these people's letters really doesn't tell us anything personal about them unless you get lucky and find something about a delicate subject where you can read the author's true feelings between the lines. So I'd say it was a different soceity and "normal" was differently defined. I mean in the end all those noble houses of Italy were somehow related through marriages - perhaps not brother/sister incest but honestly, incest in some removed form to be sure - lots of inbreeding. Take for example Maddalena Gonzaga was married to Giovanni Sforza before Lucrezia. Isabella D'Este, Maddalena's sister-in-law, was the sister of Alfonso D'Este who married Lucrezia later. Before that Alfonso was married to Anna Sforza and Ludovico Sforza was married to his sister Beatrice D'Este and so on and so forth. In the end all these alliances... not really made to keep the bloodline fresh so to speak. At least in my opinion.



Source: http://tommymerlottes.tumblr.com/ (still from his upcoming movie "Copperhead")

BL.Arinna_1982

Ah, something tells me I'm gonna watch this movie.

Nikki K

Is it about the civil war? He kind of looks like it in that costume.


Source: I'm the bad guy


Source: ~Jennifer's Place~



Source: http://elliec17.tumblr.com/

BL.Arinna_1982

I'm a fan so I'm gonna watch it.