History RaeTold

The entirely extra reign of the borgia family; or, they’re creepy and they’re kooky, they engage in family orgies and dozens of unnecessary assassinations *click click*

I’m going to start this one with a gentle disclaimer: Due to the political climate at the time of the Borgias’ rule, 90% of the stories about them were most likely lies made up by their enemies to try and discredit them and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

THAT BEING SAID.

These stories are hilarious and weird and I will be presenting them as inarguable fact. Fight me.

The Borgias were a Spanish power family around the mid- to late-1400s, and ruled the Mediterranean region for a solid few decades through rampant nepotism, misuse of the papal office, wild shagging and murder. They were basically the Kardashians of the 15th century, but with less lip fillers and more poisoning and casual incest.

The reign of the Borgias began with Alfons Borgia, a dude from a middling Valencian family who did some shit and became the pope for a period of time. Frankly I couldn’t be bothered to do any research on this guy so that’s all I can tell you about him, except that a lot of people hated him and called him a demon, but I think that’s par for the course for any Kardashian.

What I can tell you is that Alfons made his nephew Rodrigo a cardinal, which is where the madness truly began. Rodrigo was known less for his cardinalling and more for fucking everything that moved. He was particularly fond of a married woman called Vannozza, with whom he had four illegitimate children. At the time, being a cardinal and a man of God, he tried to pass these children off as his niece and nephews and definitely not the product of his illicit godless boning.

And then he became the pope.

At which point he was like “PSYCH, these are one hundred percent my children and I will be using my not inconsiderable power as God’s messenger on Earth almost exclusively to give them power and immunity for all their terrible crimes”.

So Rodrigo got on with being a bastion of nepotism and other things that I imagine Jesus would not approve of. This included making one son a cardinal, another some kind of military leader, and then just marrying his youngest son and daughter off to anyone who would have them.

The youngest and most boring Borgia, Gioffre, married a woman called Sancha who was four years older than him (the age difference was only weird because he was 12 at the time). Sancha had dual affairs with both of his older brothers at the same time, and later died at which point Gioffre married someone else as boring as he was and hung out in a house with her until his boring, boring death.

Really put the “bore” in “Borgia”.

(I just came up with that joke and I’m so proud of it).

The only reason I bring up this dull Borgia at all is because his oldest brother, Giovanni, who was having quite the affair with Gioffre’s wife, was found floating in a canal with his throat cut and nine stab wounds. This most likely not being natural causes, the artist formerly known as Rodrigo Borgia, now known as Pope Alexander, started a mad hunt for his precious son’s killer.

A hunt that he SUDDENLY CALLED OFF a mere week later.

I WONDER WHY THAT WAS, THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS RODRIGO BORGIA. Could it be because the murderer was, in fact, the husband of Giovanni’s mistress and TAFKNARB’s son, Gioffre?

No. It absolutely wasn’t. Gioffre was way too boring to murder anybody. Ugh. This guy.

You know who WASN’T too boring to stab someone nine times and fling them into a canal? Sancha’s other boyfriend, Cesare Borgia. Cesare, the second oldest Borgia, was quite the fucking character. Famously, he was the inspiration for Machiavelli’s Prince, and spent his thirty one years of life being an utter madman who murdered and fucked his way around southern Europe for no other reason than his own entertainment. As with most rich white boys, he was quite the self-starter, being made a bishop by his daddy at 15, an archbishop 1t 17 and a cardinal at 18.

At 22 he contracted syphillis, so that gives you an idea of how his religious career was going.

It was generally assumed that Cesare had Giovanni killed out of jealousy over Sancha, who clearly had a magic vagina or something. Nothing personal, though, because he killed pretty much everyone he met. In fact, he took his brother’s military rank immediately upon his death, and started a bunch of pointless military campaigns for the sole reason of murdering as many people as he wanted, including enemies, a good chunk of his allies and dozens of casual passers-by.

What a lad.

In the meantime, the sole Borgia daughter, Lucrezia, was busy getting married off to whoever Pope Al thought might be useful at the time. Her first husband she eventually divorced when he turned out to be politically useless, forcing him to sign a document of impotence in the most unnecessary marital power play of the 15th century. Her second husband was MURDERED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES (spoiler: it was definitely Cesare). Her third husband I believe died of suspiciously natural causes. And in between, there were a couple of annulled marriages and nine thousand lovers.

In the midst of all this, one suspicious child was born. This kid was called Giovanni Borgia, because there were only seven names in Spain at the time, and was claimed, by official Papal Bull, to be the child of both the Artist Formerly Known of Rodrigo Borgia and Cesare, because nobody coordinated their lies. The paternity of Giovanni Jr. is iffy, but the general consensus is that he was Lucrezia’s illegitimate son, either by her father, her brother or one of her many, many lovers. You know, normal family stuff.

Lucrezia was also a notorious poisoner, because a woman needs hobbies.

Perhaps the most well-known Borgia insanity was the Banquet of Chestnuts. This infamous party was held at the Papal Palace and involved fifty “honest prostitutes” who, among other things, crawled around on the floor naked, picking up chestnuts.

I mean… whatever floats your boat, I guess?

After all the utter banter with the chestnuts, the Borgias (just Pope Al, Cesare and Lucrezia, not the boring or dead ones) sat and watched as the guests engaged in a massive orgy, giving away prizes of fancy clothes to the men who could have the most sex with the prostitutes. Again, a perfectly normal family affair that I’m sure we can all relate to, nothing unusual here.

Jesus, guys.

When the Artist Formerly Known as Rodrigo Borgia and Latterly Known as Pope Al died, some pervert wrote quite the detailed description of his corpse, which I highly recommend you Google if you’re interested in highly detailed descriptions of disgusting, rotting corpses. Though some believe he died of malaria, many others say that he was accidentally poisoned.

And guess who accidentally poisoned him?

Of course if was fucking Cesare. Dude. Come on. Get it together.

After their father’s death, Lucrezia had a very pleasant life no longer having to marry every man who slipped her dad a fiver, and ruled a bunch of towns and shagged a bunch of men and poisoned a bunch of people and died happily in her bed, presumably surrounded by corpses and cock.

Cesare, on the other hand, had taken to wearing a leather mask like the phantom of the fucking opera, and started some mad dick-slinging war with the new pope (who hated him) and went on a bunch more unnecessary wars. Eventually, during some siege or another (probably of some poor rando’s house), he took a wrong turning and was ambushed by some men who stabbed him to death with spears and made off with all his clothes, including his creepy mask. Which is exactly the kind of death you’d expect from someone so utterly fucking extra.

Kind of makes you sad that the closest we have to a political power family in the UK is the fucking Millibands.