This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

I came to this topic as an eater first. My partner and I fell in love through food. We met during the pandemic and got to know each other through long walks and home-cooked meals. On an early date, she put a glistening mound of pasta in front of me and I thought how lucky I was to have fallen for an Italian. (She was born and raised in Rome.)

Most Italians have a strident pride in their cuisine; a passion which occasionally verges on the maniacal. The food and beverage industry makes up a quarter of Italy’s GDP and a substantial portion of its tourist draw. Food is tightly bound with ideas of national identity and politicians often rely on a kind of gastronationalism. (When running for election, current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni posted a video of herself making tortellini with a stereotypical Italian nonna.)

And it’s not just Italians who hold this enthusiasm—Italian cuisine is one of the most popular in the world. Home cooks love to prepare Italy’s dishes, and about one-eighth of restaurants in the U.S. serve Italian food. Shows like Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy and the Netflix series From Scratch highlight just how ravenous audiences are for luscious, almost erotic depictions of Italian food.

But in researching this list, I’ve learned that beneath the promotional language and tired clichés, Italian food has a complex and often contradictory history. Academics question the true origin of classic dishes like carbonara; migration from Italy to the U.S. makes it almost impossible to disentangle the two gastronomic traditions. 

Italians often obsess over this cultural purity. When Italian chef Gino D’Acampo appeared on morning television in the UK a decade ago, he was horrified by the suggestion that you could substitute ham in carbonara. “If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike,” D’Acampo responded incredulously. The clip went viral, bolstering the stereotype that Italians can be fussy about their food. But the history of Italian cuisine—like the food of any nation—is a melting pot of influences.  

But what of the future? Migration patterns, together with demographic trends and climate change, mean that the cuisine must adapt. Since 2003, Europe has experienced an unprecedented number of heatwaves, prompting Italy’s largest farmers’ union to estimate that almost a third of national agricultural production is now threatened by climate change. Italian food—so rooted in tradition and adamant in its authenticity—will have to change. 

But for now, I’m excited to visit Rome for the holidays and soak up the city’s culinary delights: creamy cacio e pepe, indulgent layers of tiramisu, and moreish slices of pizza. I’ll photograph the food, luxuriate in it, and come home with a suitcase full of olive oil and cheese. This time, I hope to enjoy the food while knowing more about the context that underpins it. Like the best Italian dishes, this topic is rich with complexity and nuance. So please devour this collection of articles that complicate the understanding of Italian food and what it means both within Italy’s borders and beyond.

Everything I, an Italian, Thought I Knew About Italian Food is Wrong (Marianna Giusti, Financial Times, March 2023)

In this fascinating piece, Italian journalist Marianna Giusti aims to uncover the truth about classic Italian dishes like carbonara, tiramisu, and panettone—which are celebrated for their authenticity despite being relatively recent inventions. She speaks with older family members and friends from across Southern Italy, asking about the food they ate as children (lots of beans and potatoes) and how it contrasts with the food on menus today.

Inaccuracies about the origins of Italian food may be considered harmless—if it wasn’t for how gastronationalism influences Italian politics and culture. She cites the example of the archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi, suggesting that pork-free “welcome tortellini” be added to the menu for the San Petronio feast. What was intended as a gesture of inclusion to communities that don’t eat pork, was slammed by far-right Lega party leader Matteo Salvini. “They’re trying to erase our history, our culture,” he said. To me, food is one of life’s great unifiers. I love to bring people together around food, but just as often, food is used to divide people. This piece made me reconsider what I thought I understood about Italian food and think critically about who and what is welcome at the table.

It’s all about identity,” Grandi tells me between mouthfuls of osso buco bottoncini. He is a devotee of Eric Hobsbawm, the British Marxist historian who wrote about what he called the invention of tradition. “When a community finds itself deprived of its sense of identity, because of whatever historical shock or fracture with its past, it invents traditions to act as founding myths,” Grandi says. 

There Is No Such Thing As Italian Food (John Last, Noema, December 2022)

In this provocatively-titled piece, journalist John Last examines how climate change and immigration patterns are changing food in Italy. It examines how ingredients from abroad and the labor of migrants were used to build one of the world’s most loved cuisines. It also cites a study that found that the role of immigrants in Italy’s farming and culinary sectors has been systematically ignored. Italian food is often celebrated for connecting eaters with unadulterated, authentic cuisine. The reality is much more complicated. I enjoyed how this deeply-reported essay challenges ideas of culinary purity and questions who that narrative excludes. I was interested to read how Italy’s microclimates produce regional specialities, and how they will be forced to adapt due to climate change. If you’re curious about the future of Italian cuisine, this is the essay for you! It has also been anthologized in Best American Food Writing 2023 for its examination of how food shapes our culture.

It’s this obsessive focus on the intersection of food and local identity that defines Italy’s culinary culture, one that is at once prized the world over and insular in the extreme. After all, campanilismo might be less charitably translated as “provincialism” — a kind of defensive small-mindedness hostile to outside influence and change.

What the Hole Is Going On? The Very Real, Totally Bizarre Bucatini Shortage of 2020 (Rachel Handler, Grub Street, December 2020)

The early months of the pandemic were characterized by lockdowns, widespread anxiety, and a national pasta shortage. In this funny, engaging piece written by the self-described “Bernstein of Bucatini,” I learned why some pasta shapes were especially difficult to find due to production challenges. This piece is an enjoyable, twisty romp that points to the sensual delight of pasta during a dark time. 

I’d like to go a step further and praise its innate bounciness and personality. If you boil bucatini for 50 percent of the time the box tells you to, cooking it perfectly al dente, you will experience a textural experience like nothing else you have encountered in your natural life. When cooked correctly, bucatini bites back. It is a responsive noodle. It is a self-aware noodle. In these times, when human social interaction carries with it the possible price of illness, bucatini offers an alternative: a social interaction with a pasta.

America, Pizza Hut, and Me (Jaya Saxena, Eater, March 2016)

I really enjoyed this thoughtful personal essay about a young girl’s obsession with Pizza Hut and the influence of food on her identity. The author questions her intersecting heritage: she’s a mixed kid with an Indian father and a white mother, a New Yorker who craves stuffed crusts in Pizza Hut rather than an “authentic” dollar slice, and a pre-teen who wants to eat “white food” while her family enjoys soupy dal and potatoes flavored with cumin and turmeric. This piece is also a useful primer on the history of Italians in America, tracing the path from “other” to mainstream acceptability. 

I was half Indian, half white, and all New Yorker. In simple assimilation calculus, going to Pizza Hut with my Indian grandparents in Fort Lee should have earned me points for eating in real life what the cool kids were eating in commercials. And yet, I was still a New Yorker: My ideal sense of self was white, but worldly, opinionated, and judgmental.

Finding Comfort and Escape in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (A. Cerisse Cohen, Lit Hub, November 2022)

I loved this essay about how the author learned to cook during the pandemic and the comfort she found in the reassuring, authoritative voice of Marcella Hazan. The piece vividly describes the flavors of Italian food (“mellow, gentle, comfortable”) and the solace found in cookbooks at a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Before learning to cook, the author considered it a domestic task inextricably linked with traditional notions of femininity and heterosexual marriage. But Hazan, who is widely considered to be the doyenne of Italian cuisine, teaches her that cooking for herself and her chosen family is an essential element of survival, not only literally but existentially. This essay brought me back to the early days of 2020. As the pandemic spiraled out of control, I found my equilibrium through brisk morning walks and the comfort of a pot bubbling on the stove. I still cook most days. Sometimes, it’s a pleasure. More often, it’s a chore. For me, this beautiful essay evoked the visceral, bodily demands of appetite and how satiating them can provide not just culinary satisfaction, but a feeling of peace and wellbeing.

Hazan helped me see that nourishing oneself, and sharing a family meal, is simply foundational. To privilege invention and labor outside the kitchen, but not inside it, is to play into patriarchal distinctions of value.

Hazan herself was a cook, an educator, and an incredible creative success. She remains influential for many contemporary cooks. Her adoration of the anchovy—“Of all the ingredients used in Italian cooking, none produces headier flavor than anchovies. It is an exceptionally adaptable flavor”—foreshadows the long reign of Alison Roman. Her careful ideas about layering flavors and her scientific approach to the kitchen find their echoes in the methodologies of Samin Nosrat (who, in her blurb for the new book, also credits Hazan with beginning her obsession with the bay leaf).

Eating the Arab Roots of Sicilian Cuisine (Adam Leith Gollner, Saveur, March 2016)

My partner and I recently returned from a holiday in Sicily. The island is considered to be a melting pot of North African, Arab, French, Spanish, and other cultures—which for me, was best understood through the food. We enjoyed regional delicacies like deep-fried lasagne, cookies made with beef and chocolate, and cremolata, a sherbet-like dessert that originated in Arab cuisine. It was a delight to remember the trip while reading this mouth-watering travel essay which aims to disentangle how Italian and Arab culinary history mixes on the island. What begins as an academic question quickly becomes a catalog of exquisite meals as the author explores the island’s rich, colonial past through its food. He traces the ingredients that are core to Italian cuisine—including the durum wheat used to make pasta—to migrants who arrived on Sicily’s shores and “gifted this land with what’s sometimes known as Cucina Arabo-Siculo.”

Sicily has had so many conquerors, and there’s simply no way to pull apart all the intermingling strands of culture in order to ascertain what is precisely “Italian” and what’s “Arab” and what’s not anything of the kind. At a certain point—ideally sometime after having a homemade seafood couscous lunch in Ortigia and sampling the life-changing pistachio ice cream at Caffetteria Luca in Bronte—you have to give up trying to isolate the various influences and accept that countless aspects of life in Sicily have been informed by Arab culture in some way. It’s deep and apparent and meaningful, but it’s also a cloud of influence as dense and intangible as the lemon gelato sky that greeted me upon my arrival.

Clare Egan is a queer freelance writer based in Dublin. She writes about food (among other things) for her newsletter and is working on her first book.

Editor: Carolyn Wells

Copyeditor: Krista Stevens

Determined to be more than another dilettante, Steinhardt built up a library of reference books on antiquities and subscribed to archaeology magazines. He scoured catalogues from Christie’s and Sotheby’s and developed fast relationships with prominent dealers. “He struck me as someone who has a fine eye,” said Aboutaam, that is, an innate sense for which objects held particular significance. Before long, he was spending millions of dollars a year on bronze figurines and Roman mosaics, terracotta idols and stone skulls.

At the time, the antiquities trade was almost entirely unregulated. Fake artifacts were common, as were unscrupulous dealers who had developed numerous methods, including straw purchases and forged paperwork, to skirt patrimony laws designed to keep cultural property from being smuggled out of its country of origin. In 1973, John D. Cooney, a renowned curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, told the New York Times that “95 percent of the ancient art material in this country has been smuggled in.” Anybody who thought otherwise, he added, would have to be “naïve or not very bright.”

Steinhardt was unconcerned. “My overwhelming motivation in buying ancient art was their aesthetics,” he once said in a deposition. “And aesthetics had almost nothing to do with provenance.” He boldly admitted that he would buy pieces that were “fresh,” i.e., taken straight out of the ground, and said he was willing to accept the risk that those purchases might have broken the law. As an investor, mastering risk had brought him wealth and prestige. Why should antiquities be different?

He was drawn to the idea of working on rare violins — “I could see it was a craft” — and applied for a position at the prestigious violin dealer and restoration shop Bein & Fushi in 1979. Also located in the Fine Arts Building, Bein & Fushi ran a cutthroat apprentice program, but Becker’s talent was obvious from the start. “They said I was the best person they’d ever had,” he says.

When the top restorer left in 1982, Becker was tapped to fill his shoes. His first repair? The Adam, a 1714 Stradivarius violin named for a former collector. The business’s co-owner Robert Bein had given his employee The Secrets of Stradivari, a book by the acclaimed Italian luthier Simone Sacconi outlining the author’s best practices, and Becker absorbed them all. “I did some great work on that instrument,” he says.

In 1989, Becker took over as head of the entire workshop. Already renowned, Bein & Fushi became one of the world’s most prominent violin shops during Becker’s time there, thanks in large part to his work. “He was brilliant,” recalls Drew Lecher, who worked alongside him. “I guess you could say he had a Midas finger. If a violin didn’t sound right, he’d make it sound right. And if it didn’t look quite right, he’d make it look right. He was the standard-bearer.”

All across Italy, as Parasecoli tells me, food is used to identify who is Italian and who is not. But dig a little deeper into the history of Italian cuisine and you will discover that many of today’s iconic delicacies have their origins elsewhere. The corn used for polenta, unfortunately for Pezzutti, is not Italian. Neither is the jujube. In fact, none of the foods mentioned above are. All of them are immigrants, in their own way — lifted from distant shores and brought to this tiny peninsula to be transformed into a cornerstone of an ever-changing Italian cuisine.

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

Anne Thériault | Longreads | May 2020 | 33 minutes (8,371 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

If you love Queens of Infamy, consider becoming a Longreads member.

* * *

Mention the Medieval period and people free-associate themselves right into visions of plague, violence, and shit-covered peasants. The term “Renaissance,” on the other hand, conjures up stuff like humanism, science, and paintings of people that actually look like people. But late 14th-, 15th-, and 16th-century Italy consisted of more than just painters with Ninja Turtle names wanking their way from one Tuscan villa to another; it was also full of intrigue, murder, and complex intergenerational family drama. If there was one family that featured heavily in some of the most violent and licentious stories of the period, it was the Borgias — even today their name is a by-word for depravity. And at the center of many of the wildest Borgia stories was the beautiful, wily, thrice-wed Lucrezia.

Looking for a Queens of Infamy t-shirt or tote bag? Choose yours here.

People have called Lucrezia many things over the years: seductress, murderess, femme fatale of the Borgia cabal. The attributes assigned to her didn’t come out of nowhere; as we shall see — and as Lucrezia noted herself — many of the men around her came to unfortunate ends. In portrayals where she escapes the villainess role, she’s often made out to be another hapless aristocratic daughter traded off into various political marriages, someone with no agency or ambitions of her own. The reality, of course, is much more nuanced. While Lucrezia was indeed married off several times to further her family’s agenda, as an adult she proved herself to be a skilled ruler loved and respected by her subjects.

LUCREZIA: women! we contain multitudes

LUCREZIA: and not just in a constantly-pregnant, heir-providing way

LUCREZIA: although, let’s be real, I also did that at the same time I was doing everything else

LUCREZIA: among other things, women invented multitasking

The Borgias — Borja in the dynasty’s hometown, Valencia — had shown up on the Roman scene in the early 15th century with Cardinal Alfonso de Borgia’s promotion to Pope Callixtus III in 1455. His election didn’t mean that he was particularly popular; the elites of the Italian city-states were notoriously hateful towards outsiders in general, and specifically loathed the fact that Borgia came from a former Moorish kingdom with a large Jewish population. Callixtus was chosen as a compromise candidate in a conclave divided by two powerful Roman families, and since he was an elderly foreigner, both factions assumed that a) they could manipulate him, and b) he would die soon. Even though Callixtus was pretty chill as far as Renaissance popes go, apparently even managing to remain chaste, he and his family were always viewed with suspicion. The Borgia family would go on to produce several popes, but their contemporaries would constantly deploy xenophobic and anti-Semitic slurs against them. This almost certainly contributed to the clannishness for which the Borgias became notorious (although Callixtus didn’t help matters by bringing a large contingent of Spaniards to the Vatican, including his nephew Rodrigo).

After Callixtus’ death in 1458, the Italians swore up and down that they would never tolerate another foreign pope. “Never again” turned out to be less than 50 years, since in 1492 the College of Cardinals elected Rodrigo de Borgia to the church’s highest office. On August 26 of that year he rode through the lavishly decorated streets of Rome to claim the Throne of Saint Peter as Alexander VI.

The first thing you need to know about Alexander is that women apparently found him extremely, irresistibly fuckable. “[He] moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences iron,” wrote a former tutor. He wasn’t the type to let a pesky vow of celibacy get in his way, and over the course of his lifetime, he fathered between eight and ten illegitimate children. His favorites — Giovanni, Cesare, and Lucrezia — were with a twice-married Italian woman named Vannozza Cattanei. She also had a fourth child, Gioffre, whom Alexander acknowledged as his own, although he had his doubts and never afforded him the same affection as the couple’s other three children (in fact, he accused her of cheating on him with her second husband, which is… a reach).

As with so many of the other infamous women that I’ve written about in this series, the details of Lucrezia’s early life are hazy. But unlike, say, Eleanor of Aquitaine or Anne Boleyn, we do know the date and place of Lucrezia’s birth: April 18, 1480, in the fortress of Subiaco just outside of Rome. Her father placed her in the care of his relative Adriana de Mila at a young age; while Vannozza was fine as a mistress, he didn’t trust her in the business of raising his children. She was named after the Ancient Roman noblewoman Lucretia, who was said to have killed herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last king of Rome. The fact that the name Lucretia was so strongly associated with an icon of feminine chastity would be the cause for much hilarity during Lucrezia’s lifetime, since she was often anything but.

* * *

Alexander was a loving and attentive father — a real Renaissance Daddy — and Lucrezia and her siblings were much, much closer to him than they were to Vannozza, who seemed content enough with the child-rearing arrangement and milked whatever money and social climbing she could from her position as mother of the Pope’s children. Although it might seem somewhat counterintuitive for the pope to have children — literal evidence of sins committed! — it was actually pretty common. Most popes preferred to help their offspring through back channels rather than publicly promote them, but Alexander was a man who couldn’t help flaunting what he had. Lucrezia was 12 when her father ascended to the papal throne, and at that point she came much more directly into the public eye.

Lucrezia was a beautiful young woman, although, as contemporaries kept feeling the need to point out, not quite as lovely as her father’s new mistress, Giulia. Describing Lucrezia in her early 20s, Niccolò Cagnalo of Parma wrote that she was “of middle height and graceful in form.” He went on to praise her long golden hair, well-cut nose, and “admirably proportioned” bust, concluding that she was always “gay and smiling” — if he had only added that she had quirkily ordered a burger for lunch but only eaten the side salad, his letter would have read like a Vanity Fair celebrity profile. Her bearing was also striking, and she was said to carry herself in such a way that she barely seemed to move even as she crossed a room. (Gliding around like a nimble ghost was a big thing for Renaissance women.)

The Borgias were a tightly-knit group (a bit too tight according to some of their frenemies). Feuds and shifting alliances were common for prominent Roman families, but when it came to the Borgias, it was them versus literally everyone else. They dealt with this isolation by surrounding themselves with their countrymen — the only people they felt they could trust — and by segregating themselves from everyone else, hosting private parties and speaking Valencian when they were together.

Like any loving father who also happens to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, Alexander had big plans for his kids. He made Giovanni the Duke of Gandía and promoted Cesare to the position of Bishop of Pamplona at the age of 15, grooming him for a life in the Church. He even managed to winkle a prestigious marriage for Gioffre: a young noblewoman named — wait for it — Sancia, pronounced san-chya (I see you, George R.R. Martin, flipping through the history of Europe like it’s a baby name book). When it came to Lucrezia, his plans were slightly more complicated. Her greatest value as a woman in Renaissance Italy lay in her ability to marry well, especially since her position as Vatican princess would last only as long as her father lived, but Alexander also recognized that she had talents that exceeded your basic snagging-a-rich-man-with-a-title needs.

Get the Longreads Top 5 Email

Kickstart your weekend by getting the week’s best reads, hand-picked and introduced by Longreads editors, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.

Sign up now

At the age of 12, Lucrezia was already on betrothal number three; her first engagement had fallen through, and her father ended her second engagement when he became Pope and her prospects improved. The third time was the charm, and her engagement to Giovanni Sforza, the illegitimate son of a count, managed to stick. They were married on June 12, 1493, Lucrezia having just celebrated her 13th birthday. The Sforzas had been powerful allies of Alexander and had helped him secure the papal throne, and so he wanted to reward them. But, unfortunately for Giovanni, it was not a union built to last.

ALEXANDER VI: I mean, I’m a pope who flagrantly has children

ALEXANDER VI: even Isabella of Castile told me to take it down a notch

ALEXANDER VI: obviously I have a, shall we say

ALEXANDER VI: less than traditional approach to the sanctity of marriage

Like everything else in her life, the collapse of Lucrezia’s first marriage was complex in both the political and personal arenas. But before we get to the juicy, a bit of backstory. Giovanni (Borgia, the brother, not Sforza, the husband), left Rome for Barcelona shortly after Lucrezia’s wedding, and Alexander made Cesare the Archbishop of Valencia. It’s not necessary to get into details here, but please know that the Borgia brothers were being fuckboys supreme while in Spain.

Meanwhile, back on the Italian peninsula, the King of Naples, Ferdinand I, died and the pope supported Ferdinand’s son Alfonso’s claim to the throne instead of the much more specious claim of King Charles VIII of France. This ticked off Lucrezia’s husband Giovanni, whose family — the Sforzas — were the traditional enemies of the royal family of Naples, and he politely asked Alexander what on earth he was thinking. The pope responded by telling him even more politely to fuck off. It was the beginning of the end of poor Giovanni’s relationship with the Borgias. History has left us plenty of information about what Giovanni and Alexander thought about this turn of events, but not much about how Lucrezia viewed it. Her behavior suggested that she felt humiliated by the public unraveling of her relationship, but she was too much under her father’s thrall to push back. After all, she’d been taught from the cradle that her duties to the Borgia family always came first.

But, back to Charles VIII for now. He decided that if the pope wasn’t going to give him Naples, then he was going to take it, along with whatever else stood in his path. His army rapidly made their way through the north of Italy, and on December 31, 1494, they entered Rome. Lucrezia was in Pesaro with her husband and Giulia, Giovanni was still in Barcelona, and 12-year-old Gioffre was in Naples, all of which meant that the only family the pope had nearby was Cesare. Luckily, both brought out the Borgia craftiness in spades.

Alexander knew that Charles was a deeply religious man, and as the French entered the city, the pope proclaimed that if a single salvo was fired, he would mount the battlements himself and hold the Communion host above his head.

CHARLES VIII: what was I supposed to do?

CHARLES VIII: shoot at the Holy Sacrament?

CHARLES VIII: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a little thing called transubstantiation, but

CHARLES VIII: that little bread thing is literally Jesus’ body

CHARLES VIII: anyway, I just couldn’t

CHARLES VIII: so I went to some brothels instead, let my soldiers sack the city

CHARLES VIII: Christ-like, you know?

When Charles finally met Alexander, the king flung himself at the pope’s feet. The two spent the next few weeks together, Alexander offering Charles advice and referring to him as his first-born son. Eventually they formed a pact of non-aggression that would allow the French safe passage through the Papal States, although Alexander refused to provide a firm answer on the question of Naples. Charles left Rome on January 28 with Cesare as a hostage, but the pope’s son sneaked back to Rome by disguising himself as a groom. When he found out that he’d been Borgia’d, Charles furiously declared that all Italians were dirty dogs and the pope was the dirtiest of them all.

Charles took Naples in February of 1495, but a month later Alexander, along with the rulers of Venice, Milan, and the Holy Roman Empire, came together to form Team Fuck The French The League of Venice. Charles might not have been a brilliant strategist, but he was geographically savvy enough to know that, being in the south of Italy, he and his troops had to pass through the north — and The League — to get home. So he quickly peaced out of the peninsula, but not before he and his men bestowed the gift of syphilis upon Naples, where it would subsequently become known as the French disease.

* * *

The summer of 1496 was one long Borgia party. Lucrezia returned to Rome shortly after her father’s victory, Gioffre and Sancia made it back in May, and Giovanni joined the clan in August. 18-year-old Sancia allegedly began having an affair with either one or both of her husband’s brothers, probably because her 14-year-old husband wasn’t done with puberty yet. Sancia also became close friends with Lucrezia, and the two of them scandalized Rome by gossiping and giggling through boring sermons at St. Peter’s.

Meanwhile, annulment plans were afoot.

By early 1497, it was clear to everyone that the Borgias had collectively moved on from Lucrezia’s marriage, although their reasons were unclear. Was Alexander still angry that Giovanni Sforza had briefly stood up to him? Was he punishing him for the fact that the rest of the Sforza family had sided with the French against him? Had his recent military success convinced him that he could make a bigger and better match for this daughter? What we do know is that Giovanni left Rome — more like fled — at the end of March. He then began dropping hints that his in-laws had been making threats against him. Once again, it’s hard to know what (if any) role Lucrezia played in any of this; some people believe that she was the one who had warned Giovanni that Alexander and Cesare were out to get him, while others believe that she was in league with her family. Whatever the case was, the outcome was a separation.

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and then

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and THEN

GIOVANNI SFORZA: the pope said he wanted to annul my marriage

GIOVANNI SFORZA: on grounds of non-consummation

GIOVANNI SFORZA: DUE TO IMPOTENCE

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and I was like, bro, my penis works great

GIOVAANNI SFORZA: anyway, I told everybody that Alexander probably wanted his daughter for himself

GIOVANNI SFORZA: you know, incest-wise

17-year-old Lucrezia had checked out of the situation and retreated to a convent. Some claimed she was angry with her father over the annulment, while others confirmed that she and Giovanni had parted on “unamicable terms.” No matter how you slice it, it was clear Lucrezia was tired of the men in her life engaging in nonstop histrionics.

Less than two weeks after Lucrezia had ensconced herself in the walls of San Sisto, tragedy struck the Borgias. Giovanni Borgia disappeared after leaving a family dinner at his mother Vannozza’s house; his body turned up in the Tiber covered in stab wounds. Alexander was distraught at the loss of his favorite, and spent days shut in his room, weeping and refusing all food and drink. In a public statement given on June 19, he said that he would give up seven papacies if that could bring back his son. Rumors about the murderers’ identities flew around Rome. Was it a retaliatory move from Giovanni Sforza and his publicly maligned penis? Was it the Orsini family, who had an old vendetta against the Borgias? Was it, some whispered, Cesare, over the fact that he and Giovanni were allegedly competing for Sancia’s attention? The mystery deepened when, after just a week, all inquiries were suspended.

You can’t keep a good pope down for long, though, and within a month a grieving Alexander was scheming about Lucrezia’s next marriage. This one was going to be even bigger and better than the first, the prospective groom being Alfonso of Aragon, the illegitimate son of the now-abdicated King of Naples (and brother to Lucrezia’s old pal, Sancia). Lucrezia wasn’t the only papal child with new prospects; with the once-promising Giovanni dead, Alexander decided to pull Cesare, whom he’d made a cardinal, out of the Church and set him on a more secular path to power. This was fine with Cesare, who had inherited all of his father’s libertine qualities and none of his religious devotion.

In the middle of this hullabaloo, a wild infant Borgia appeared. Where did he come from? Whose child was he? Although the papal family acknowledged that the baby belonged to their ranks, none of them would disclose who the actual parents were. Rome, already awash with conspiracy theories about Giovanni’s death and Lucrezia’s annulment, buzzed with even greater fervor. The fact that Lucrezia had just spent several months out of the public eye did nothing to help the situation; it was rumored that the baby was hers by Giovanni Sforza, or hers by a chamberlain in Alexander’s household (a man named Pedro Calderon, whose body had also recently turned up in the Tiber). Some suggested that Cesare, or even the pope himself, had conceived the child with Lucrezia. Three years later Alexander would issue two separate bulls naming first Cesare and then himself as the boy’s father — a mother was never named — but for a while the baby was known only as the Infans Romanus (the child of Rome), adding yet another layer of dysfunction to Italy’s holiest family.

Lucrezia and Alfonso were married in the summer of 1498 in a sumptuous nuptial mass. The bride’s robe was made of golden brocade with crimson velvet; her sleeves and belt were studded with jewels, and she wore a rope of pearls around her neck. The bridegroom chose a semi-matching outfit of black brocade lined with crimson silk, and a cap topped with a brooch that his new wife had given him, featuring a unicorn and a cherub. After the ceremony, everyone feasted at the palazzo until, at Alexander’s signal, the group was escorted to a hall in the Vatican, where the real party began. At first it was pretty standard wedding stuff: drinking, dancing, gift-giving, more feasting. Later, a select few made their way to the Borgia apartments within the Vatican, where Cesare had organized a set of amusing tableaux, one of which involved him dressing as a unicorn with poor Gioffre relegated to the role of a sea-goose. The dancing and drinking continued until dawn, when a light meal was served and everybody went to bed. The festivities ended a week later with a lavish bullfight given in the couple’s honor.

LUCREZIA: if you think this is the height of obscene Borgia parties, wait til you hear about the Banquet of the Chestnuts

LUCREZIA: it allegedly involved 50 courtesans crawling around naked

LUCREZIA: and prizes for the guests who had the most sex with the courtesans

LUCREZIA: while my father and I watched

LUCREZIA: I mean, it probably never happened but, you know

LUCREZIA: allegedly

Not long after, Cesare officially resigned from his ecclesiastical role and set off to France, where he was determined to woo Alfonso’s cousin Carlotta. She presented the opportunity for a choice alliance, since her father had become the King of Naples when Alfonso’s father had abdicated during Charles VIII’s occupation (Neapolitan politics had hardly become less complicated since Joanna of Naples’ time a century earlier). His departure was so disgustingly splendid that jewels, precious metals, and other finery had to be imported from Venice — all the recent Borgia celebrations had put a dint in the Roman supply of luxury goods. Unfortunately, Carlotta was not impressed by Cesare, and in the summer of 1499 he wound up marrying Charlotte D’Albret, sister to the King of Navarre. Louis XII, the new King of France, wrote to tell Alexander in awed tones that the couple had sex eight times on their wedding day (twice before supper, and six times at night), which was four more times than he had managed on his special day.

Unsurprisingly, Alfonso and Sancia were not impressed that Cesare was associating with their enemies instead of marrying their cousin, an alliance which they’d hoped would strengthen both Rome’s support of Naples and their own position in Alexander’s family. They were even less impressed when Louis accompanied Cesare on his return to Italy, apparently intent on picking up where Charles had left off. Alfonso, fearing for his safety, fled Rome, leaving behind Lucrezia, who was six months into her second pregnancy of the year after suffering a miscarriage in February. He wrote to Lucrezia asking her to join him in Naples, but Alexander forced her to refuse. Instead of allowing his daughter to be with her husband, the pope appointed her Governor of Spoleto, a position usually held by a cardinal. In the midst of all the chaos around her, Lucrezia proved to be a competent leader and administrator, a role she would come to relish later in life.

Eventually Alfonso joined Lucrezia in Spoleto, and together they travelled to the fortress of Nepi, which Alexander had also put under her control. Meanwhile, King Louis and Cesare were riding across Italy, snapping up territories here and there; the pope did his part by relieving several lords of their states with the excuse that they were behind on their taxes. The Borgias had officially begun their long-anticipated conquest of the peninsula.

GIOVANNI SFORZA: it’s interesting how the Borgias were against the French until Cesare realized they could help fulfil his expansionist fantasies

GIOVANNI SFORZA: very interesting

GIOVANNI SFORZA: in conclusion, I’m still not impotent, from before

GIOVANNI SFORZA: I actually have an aura of potency, people tell me that all the time

GIOVANNI SFORZA: strangers see me on the street and say, there goes a potent man

GIOVANNI SFORZA: I bet his dick works great, they say, and they’re correct

GIOVANNI SFORZA: no, my divorce isn’t eating me up inside, why do you ask?

Lucrezia gave birth to a son, Rodrigo, on November 1, 1499. For a brief moment, it must have seemed to Lucrezia as if everything was going to be alright, with her father, brother, and husband united in their joy at the arrival of a son and heir. But as the new century dawned, Cesare drew Rome and his family deeper into chaos.

First, he and Louis took Milan. Then they set their sights on Naples. Louis, like his cousin Charles VIII before him, had a legitimate(ish) claim to those lands, but taking them meant unseating two powerful families — the Sforza, to which Lucrezia’s first husband belonged, and the Aragons of Naples, family of her current husband and sister-in-law. Needless to say, Alfonso and Sancia were furious over what was happening, and neither was subtle about their feelings. If Lucrezia had any thoughts on the matter, she prudently kept them to herself. More than anyone, she understood the importance of staying out of her father and brother’s way.

On July 15, 1500, Alfonso was attacked on the steps of St. Peter’s by four heavily armed men. He barely survived, and had to be carried back to the Vatican. By all accounts, Alexander was shocked and dismayed, and had his son-in-law installed in apartments above his own, where Lucrezia and Sancia could care for him around the clock. Lucrezia was terrified that another attempt on her husband’s life would follow, and she insisted that he only eat meals that she had prepared for him and be treated by no one other than his personal physician from Naples.

Alas, her efforts were in vain. On August 18, Alfonso, Sancia, and Lucrezia were enjoying a visit from his uncle when Cesare’s chief assassin, Micheletto, burst into the room with his men. The intruders managed to get everyone but Alfonso out of the room under a false but urgent-seeming pretext, and then Cesare’s so-called ministro tristissimo strangled the young duke in his bed. When the pope’s daughter and her sister-in-law returned to Alfonso’s rooms and found his corpse, their screams filled the halls of the Vatican.

Alexander was distraught as well at first, but Cesare eventually convinced him of the necessity of the murder. Alfonso had, he said, tried to shoot him with a crossbow in the garden, so really, it was an act of defense. As improbable as the story was, the pope accepted it; the alternative was to believe that his most cherished and ambitious son was a monster. Lucrezia, though, was furious. Just a few weeks after her husband’s death, Alexander packed her off to their castle in the nearby town of Nepi, apparently irritated by her obvious grieving and worried that it would further stain his son’s reputation. Rumors of incest sprang up (again), this time asserting that Cesare had killed Lucrezia’s husband out of jealousy. Some even speculated that Lucrezia had been in on the crime. Meanwhile, the always forward-thinking Alexander began to plot a third marriage for his 20-year-old daughter.

* * *

Just as she had after the end of her first marriage, Lucrezia went into a complete retreat after Alfonso’s murder. She remained in Nepi for several months, writing letters signed “the most unhappy princess of salerno [sic],” which was the title she’d acquired through her marriage to Alfonso. She ordered oodles of black clothing and furnishings for her mourning and requested masses to be said for her dead husband’s soul. When Alexander began talking of another marriage, Lucrezia balked. The pope asked her why she didn’t want to marry again, and she replied acidly, “Because my husbands have been very unlucky.” Still, she eventually agreed to wed Alfonso d’Este, the son and heir of the Duke of Ferrara. (It’s kind of weird to marry someone with the same first name as your former partner, but if Ben Affleck could make it work, so can anyone else.) This match was even more advantageous than Lucrezia’s first two marriages, and if she was understandably reluctant, there was also a part of her that must have been eager to escape her father and brother’s poisonous clutches. Before, she had willingly participated in her family’s shenanigans, but now she saw the necessity of asserting her own will.

LUCREZIA: I mean, as much as one can assert one’s own will against the literal pope

LUCREZIA: the temporal and spiritual leader, direct line to God, etc

LUCREZIA: but, you know, I’d learned a thing or two from him during our years together

LUCREZIA: one was that you can never have too many jewels

LUCREZIA: another was how to work a situation to your advantage

Alfonso d’Este was a bit of an odd duck. His main passions in life were artillery, pottery, and brothels. His first wife, yet another Sforza, had died in childbirth, not that he cared much. Their relationship had been marked by deep mutual disinterest, which allowed him to look the other way when she began dressing as a man and sleeping with women. According to at least one source, Alfonso liked to march naked through the streets of Ferrara, a sword in one hand and his penis clutched in the other. You know, normal Renaissance stuff! Lucrezia’s third husband was a jumble of eccentricities, but, somehow, he would prove to be a good match for her.

An escort from Ferrara arrived in Rome in the fall of 1501, and we know exactly what Lucrezia wore to meet it because her future sister-in-law, Isabella d’Este, had sent a spy among the retinue. He wrote that the bride-to-be was dressed in a mulberry gown banded with gold under a gold jacket lined with sable, a necklace of rubies and pearls, and a gem-encrusted snood. He also reported that Lucrezia was graceful and beautiful and a good Christian, much to Isabella’s dismay.

The proxy marriage took place on December 30 and just over a week later, Lucrezia set out for Ferrara with a large retinue. She had agreed to leave her 2-year-old son Rodrigo behind, and her parting from him must have been wrenching. Had she been a man, she most likely would have been able to bring him along, but as things stood, the Borgias wanted her to seem unencumbered by her dicey romantic past. Of course, the double-edged reality of womanhood meant that although she had been counseled to leave her son behind, the fact that she did so would be used for many years after her death as evidence that she was monstrously unmaternal. But she stayed as involved in his care as possible, sending him letters and gifts and arranging his education. She was distraught when he died at the age of 12 from a fever; in typical Lucrezia fashion, she retreated to a convent for a month to grieve in private.

The journey to Ferrara, way up in the north of the boot, was long and made longer still by Lucrezia’s frequent requests to stop and wash her hair. Her blond curls reached all the way to her knees and cleansing them — which she did every three days with a boiled mixture of vine stock ashes, myrrh, scrapings of horses’ hooves, and other assorted ingredients — was a time-consuming enterprise. “She [keeps] always to her room, to wash her hair but also because she is rather solitary and remote by nature,” wrote one envoy. Was she anxious about meeting her new husband? Or was she just exercising what little control she could muster over the situation?

Alfonso d’Este surprised her by meeting the convoy in the city of Bologna, bursting into his bride’s room while she was combing her damp hair, barely dressed in a muslin gown. This romantic gesture delighted Lucrezia, and the bridegroom, for his part, was surprised by his immediate attraction to his new wife. He had never had much interest in his first one, and hadn’t remotely expected to fall into deep smit with his second. The two traveled on to Malalbergo where they met Isabella d’Este, whose jealousy only deepened upon meeting her new sister-in-law. It probably didn’t help that Isabella’s own marriage to Francesco Gonzaga was an unhappy one; her main interests in life were collecting art and meddling in the lives of those around her. They arrived in Ferrara together, where Duke Ercole d’Este met them with great fanfare.

Wedding no. 3 was yet another lavish affair. Alfonso wore a tunic of gray velvet covered in beaten gold scales, a black velvet cap, and gray calfskin boots. Lucrezia wore an ermine-lined robe made of violet satin and cloth of gold; she had a diamond and ruby necklace and a headdress bedecked with still more diamonds, plus sapphires and other precious stones. The procession wound through the city to the piazza, where an acrobatic display had been arranged. Later, the happy couple retired to specially-prepared bridal apartments where, Isabella’s spy reported to her, they thrice boned. The remainder of Isabella’s letters home detail her disdain: Lucrezia slept in every morning, the plays and mock-battles arranged for the wedding were boring, the balls were too crowded to actually dance. “Your Lordship should not envy me for your not being here at this marriage because it is of such a coldness that I envy anyone who remained in Mantua,” she concluded one letter.

Much to Isabella’s chagrin, the rest of the Este family adored Lucrezia. Ercole, who was a bit of an eccentric himself (he collected famous nuns, which were a bit of a tourist attraction at the time, and placed them in local convents), was almost as thrilled about her as his son. Alfonso d’Este’s brothers Ferrante and Ippolito were also charmed by their new sister-in-law. When Lucrezia became ill during the first pregnancy of her third marriage, it was Ferrante who accompanied her to the Este country estate at Belriguardo so that she could rest and get some fresh air.

Lucrezia’s illness continued throughout her pregnancy and, indeed, would affect her during all of her subsequent pregnancies. It’s not clear if it was a pregnancy-related disorder like preeclampsia or HELLP syndrome, or had to do with the fact that her husband likely had syphilis — the epidemiological effects of Charles VIII’s invasion were still rippling across Italy. She was further stressed by the behavior of her brother Cesare, who captured Urbino in June 1502; not only was her family’s continued warmongering upsetting for Lucrezia, but the Duke and Duchess of Urbino had become her friends after giving her a warm reception on her trek to Ferrara. Her condition continued to deteriorate over the summer, and by the end of July she was suffering from a fever and having seizures.

LUCREZIA: meanwhile Cesare wrote me a letter being like

LUCREZIA: “I know what will make you feel better, I’m about to invade Camerino!”

LUCREZIA: surprise, him being back on his bullshit didn’t fix my pregnancy problems

LUCREZIA: the things men know about women could fill a very small paragraph in a very small book

Lucrezia had returned to Ferrara at this point, and Alfonso slept in the room next to her and attended to her at every meal. But even with his thoughtful care she continued to decline until, on September 5, she suffered a seizure so severe that she went into preterm labor and delivered a stillborn daughter. Cesare rushed to his sister’s side and spent a day with her; she seemed to rally under his attention and even laughed at one of his jokes while her doctors bled her. Then, on September 13, she became so ill that when she tried to feel her own pulse, she couldn’t find it, exclaiming, “Oh good, I am dead!”

* * *

If Cesare’s visit to Lucrezia seems strangely brief, that was because he was hatching yet another scheme. He had his eye on Bologna, but several of his own followers — including members of the Orsini family — began plotting to bring him down. Hey, remember the Orsini? The ones who were suspected of orchestrating Giovanni Borgia’s murder? Alexander sure did, and when he and Cesare learned of their treachery, they began counter-plotting. Cesare and Micheletto did the dirty work of strangling the main conspirators, while Alexander arrested and incarcerated a bunch of lesser Orsini, including the Archbishop of Florence. Machiavelli, who just happened to be on the scene, was suitably impressed; Cesare would serve as a major inspiration for The Prince, a classic on the art of political scheming.

As Cesare’s powers waxed, Lucrezia embarked on an affair with a poet named Pietro Bembo (who would later multitask to become a linguist and a cardinal). Alfonso d’Este was still regularly visiting brothels, so he wasn’t exactly being a paragon of fidelity, and everyone knows that poets are irresistible (if often terrible). As much as Lucrezia was fond of her husband, his earthy ways weren’t exactly to her taste, and she missed the highfalutin artistic and philosophical circles she’d moved in at her father’s court. We’ve all been through our own “dating an artist” phase; we get it. (Speaking of bad artist boyfriends, the letters between Lucrezia and Bembo would one day drive Lord Byron into a horny frenzy, leading him to steal a lock of her hair from the archives in Milan. Oh, Byron!)

In the summer of 1503, while illicit romantic tensions were mounting in Ferrara, catastrophe struck. On August 11, Alexander celebrated the 11th anniversary of his ascension to the papal throne; on August 12, he and Cesare both came down with an illness that caused vomiting and frighteningly high fevers. For a while it seemed as if the pope was recovering while his son got worse, but then things took a turn. Pope Alexander VI died on the evening of August 18; some said his last words were “I come; it is right; wait a moment.” The funeral was an objective fiasco, with the August heat bloating and putrefying Alexander’s body to the point where it could no longer fit in his coffin — attendants had to roll it up in a carpet and shove it into the narrow box. When Cesare learned of his father’s death, he knew his status was about to take a nosedive. Still recovering from his illness and barely able to stand, he sent his troops in to control the new conclave, forcing the election of a man he knew would support him. Unfortunately for Cesare, Pope Pius III would have one of the shortest pontificates in history — just 26 days.

Lucrezia was once more undone by her grief, but, given her family’s ongoing expansionist activities and general treachery, she wasn’t likely to find a sympathetic ear in Ferrara. Bembo counselled her to hide her mourning and display her famous aloofness, writing, “this is not the first blow which you have suffered at the hands of your cruel and malevolent destiny. Indeed your spirit ought to be inured to shocks of fate, so many and so bitter have you already suffered.”

LUCREZIA: things went downhill from there

LUCREZIA: after Pius, my father’s mortal enemy Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope

LUCREZIA: and then I had another miscarriage

LUCREZIA: then Cesare was captured and imprisoned

LUCREZIA: luckily, through it all I was surrounded by emotionally supportive men

LUCREZIA: hahaha omg obviously I am kidding

LUCREZIA: the men in this story are many things, but “emotionally supportive” is not one of them

In the middle of this personal and geopolitical rollercoaster, Lucrezia began another affair, this time with her brother-in-law Francesco Gonzaga. That’s right, Isabella’s husband, a man so wanton with his favors that a large number of children in Mantua bore a striking resemblance to him. Listen, we all make choices in this life!

Speaking of life, Lucrezia’s was about to be turned upside down once again. Duke Ercole d’Este died on January 25, 1505, making Alfonso the new Duke of Ferrara. Lucrezia became pregnant once again, and must have felt that her spot was nearly secure: she had the title of Duchess and was hopefully carrying the Duke’s heir, all in spite of her family’s downfall. But if any year proved to be Lucrezia’s annus horribilis, this was it. Cesare, whose situation caused her great anguish, tried to escape from prison, only to be caught and sent to a better-fortified stronghold. The newly-minted duchess began a letter-writing campaign to free him, appealing to anyone and everyone she could think of. Then, as the weather warmed, an outbreak of the plague hit Ferrara, followed by a drought that spoiled the crops. Hundreds of people died each day from disease and hunger, while the ruling class fled to their country estates. Lucrezia was ill too — although it’s not clear if it was the plague, or pregnancy-related, or something else — but as the brutal season wore on she continued her borderline delusional campaign to secure her brother’s freedom. She even grew desperate enough to ask the new pope, Julius II, to release Cesare.

JULIUS II: lol

JULIUS II: just… lol

JULIUS II: one might even say, lmao

Shortly after this botched attempt, Lucrezia suffered another one of those “shocks of fate” that Bembo had described: after giving birth to a sickly son on September 19, her legs went numb and she was once again struck by a fever. Hoping that her baby might channel some of her father’s strength, she named him Alexander. But the newborn struggled to eat and, less than a month later, died. It was one more blow to Lucrezia’s emotional well-being.

LUCREZIA: meanwhile, trouble was brewing amongst my brothers-in-law

LUCREZIA: I’m not really going to get into it here, but it started with a fight over a musician

LUCREZIA: then turned into a fight over my slutty cousin Angela

LUCREZIA: then one of them stabbed the other in the eyes

LUCREZIA: then it somehow devolved into a plot to assassinate my husband

LUCREZIA: men call women dramatic, but really?

LUCREZIA: every single man in my life has been like this

In early 1507, Lucrezia miscarried yet again; this time Alfonso d’Este blamed her for carousing too much during carnival season. Two months later, Cesare, who had escaped prison once again in late 1506, was betrayed, stabbed, then stripped and left to die alone. Lucrezia, who only learned of his death a month after it happened, was distraught, wailing, “The more I try to please God, the more he tries me.” She shut herself away from the world once again, not knowing how else to cope with this fresh loss. Although Cesare and their father had manipulated her, used her to promote their own agenda, and (likely) killed her beloved second husband, they remained the two people to whom she felt the closest in the world. The bonds of abuse and trauma are strange things; while Lucrezia came to question how they had treated her, she still believed them when they swore that it was the Borgias versus the world. Now there was nobody left on her side.

* * *

Lucrezia became pregnant once again in the summer of 1507, and on April 4, 1508 gave birth to a healthy son who, according to Isabella D’Este’s spy, had “a most beautiful mouth but a little snub nose and eyes [which were] not very dark nor very large.” The boy was christened Ercole after Alfonso d’Este’s father, but even his birth didn’t fully pull Lucrezia out of her spiral. She wrote flagrant letters to Francesco Gonzaga, which she knew would infuriate her husband if he ever intercepted them. She was long past the point of caring, and begged her lover/brother-in-law to visit her. He refused on the grounds that his syphilis was flaring, which may or may not have been a convenient excuse.

Help us fund our next story

We’ve published hundreds of original stories, all funded by you — including personal essays, reported features, and reading lists.

Become a member

The Italian Wars that Charles VIII had begun 15 years earlier were still ongoing, and Alfonso was absent from the end of 1509 until 1512. Lucrezia remained in Ferrara and once again flexed the muscles of leadership and administration that she’d first begun exercising all those years ago in Spoleto. Alfonso, meanwhile, proved to be an able soldier and tactician. Together, Lucrezia and Alfonso were a real, if unlikely, Renaissance Dream Team.

LUCREZIA: again, I don’t want to get into it, but we switched over to Louis XII’s side

LUCREZIA: and Julius II had some big feelings about that

LUCREZIA: he excommunicated us and tried to capture Ferrara

LUCREZIA: it was a whole thing

Alfonso managed to get his hands on a statue of Julius that Michelangelo had made, which he promptly melted down and forged into a cannon he called La Giulia — all except for the head, which he stuck on a pike. The fighting was near-constant, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. In the midst of all this, Lucrezia gave birth to another son, named Ippolito after his cardinal uncle. The war dragged on until Easter Sunday 1512, when a decisive battle took place outside Ravenna, at which an estimated 10,000 men were killed. It was a significant win for Alfonso d’Este, whose innovative approach to artillery carried the day.

ALFONSO: see??

ALFONSO: all those weird hobbies were worth it

ALFONSO: and during the war, when we had to sell all our fancy silver plates?

ALFONSO: that’s right, we ate off my pottery

ALFONSO: the brothel visits were probably also good for something, although I’m not sure what yet

The Duke’s re-entry into his city was a splendid victory parade, and Lucrezia was waiting for him at the Castello. Three months later Alfonso d’Este travelled to Rome, where Julius gritted his teeth and gave him absolution. Secretly, though, the pope was still determined to take Ferrara by hook or by crook (or, technically speaking, by ferula). Alas for him, he died on February 21, 1513, before any of his plots could come to fruition. Lucrezia and the Este family had won, and it was a victory that would shape the papacy for years to come: among those they took prisoner during the Battle of Ravenna was Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, the man who would soon be Leo X — as well as great-uncle to noted serpent queen Catherine de’ Medici. Soon enough he would begin orchestrating his own Borgia-like schemes, making the Medici name at least as infamous (if not more).

In spite of her various indiscretions, Lucrezia had always had a pious bent — even after leaving Rome she would retreat to convents during difficult periods — and as she got older, she became even more devout. Her personal losses certainly played a big part in this progression; not only had she lost her father and brother, but Rodrigo, her son with the ill-fated first Alfonso, had died in 1512. In 1514, she gave birth to another son named after her father, but he died in 1516. She also gave birth to a healthy daughter in 1515, and another healthy son in 1516. Each pregnancy and birth was physically difficult, and it’s hard to imagine how worn out she must have been from, well, everything.

LUCREZIA: as an aside, I would just like to note that I named my youngest son Francesco

LUCREZIA: that’s right, as in Gonzaga

LUCREZIA: we were still kind of an item

LUCREZIA: it’s called misdirection, look it up

Shortly after little Francesco d’Este’s birth, Lucrezia received word that her brother Gioffre had died. Her mother Vannozza died in 1518. Lucrezia had never been particularly close to either of them — in fact, her main communication with her mother involved the latter constantly writing to ask her for money — but these deaths meant that she had now lost both her parents and all of her siblings. Vannozza being Vannozza, she had organized her own lavish funeral and had arranged to put all of her children’s names and titles on her tombstone, even though she had maintained almost no relationship with any of them (other than Cesare) since they were young children. It’s hard not to respect a baller move like that.

1518 was also the year Alfonso d’Este was summoned by the French king to attend a rapprochement between the French and English crowns. During his absence, Lucrezia, who was in the early months of yet another pregnancy, was left to govern Ferrara in her own name. Once again she did a superlative job. She and her husband had developed a powerful mutual admiration — by this point her relationship with Francesco Gonzaga was a thing of the past — and discovered that their strengths and talents complemented each other. When Alfonso d’Este returned home in early 1519, he went straight to Lucrezia’s chambers.

* * *

This final pregnancy was another difficult one. By June, Lucrezia was barely able to eat, and soon doctors decided to induce labor to save her life. They broke her water, and on June 14 she gave birth to a daughter so weak that Alfonso d’Este rushed to have her baptized; as was predicted, tiny Isabella Maria did not survive. At first Lucrezia seemed to improve, but on June 20 her health went into steep decline. She began to have seizures again and blood poured from her nose. The doctors cut off her hair and bled her, but she continued to worsen, losing the ability to see and speak. On June 22 she rallied, and those around her hoped she might make a full recovery, but Lucrezia knew the end was near. She dictated a letter to Pope Leo X asking him to pray for her. Two days later the seizures started again and that night, just two months after her 39th birthday, she died.

Alfonso d’Este had barely left Lucrezia’s side during her illness, and was inconsolable after her death. In a letter written shortly after, he described her as a “sweet, dear companion” and spoke of “the tender love there was between us.” In another he said that he was left “in the greatest imaginable anguish.” What began as a political match had turned into a loving marriage, and he could not imagine life without her.

Lucrezia is a rare case of a historical woman who was, against all odds, actually appreciated in her lifetime; her father, brothers, and husband all recognized her intelligence, administrative skills, and political acumen and, rather than being intimidated by those traits, allowed her to use them. Her story has been twisted into that of an incestuous man-eater who dabbled in murder, but when we look at (relatively) unbiased sources, there’s no evidence that any of this is true.

Many readers suggested that I write about Lucrezia when I first began this series, but for a long time I resisted covering her. My reasoning was pedantic: she wasn’t a queen (even if she was sort of a Vatican princess), and if I expanded my self-created rules then all would soon descend into chaos. But beneath that was another worry: there was too much scandal in Lucrezia’s story and not enough humanity. Like so many others before me, I let her reputation precede her and took it at face value. I should have known better. The way that historians and contemporary observers have twisted Lucrezia’s story over the years tells us a lot about how the Western world views women and power. We’re equally entranced by and terrified of the women who wield it, and those feelings — not the facts — shape their narratives to fit our beliefs. Sometimes this means creating sanitized versions of their lives in which they are indisputably virtuous heroines, but more often, as in Lucrezia’s case, it means arranging facts and rumors into the worst possible interpretation. This does an obvious disservice to the subjects of these biographies, but it also has a larger impact on contemporary politics. How can we view female leaders as being fully human when we’ve spent so long fudging the history of powerful women to suit misogynist agendas? Re-evaluating the stories of scandalous women from history is one place to start.

Long live Lucrezia! Long live the fucking duchess!

* * *

For further reading on Lucrezia:

• Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Live, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy
• Leonie Frieda, The Deadly Sisterhood: A Story of Women, Power and Intrigue in the Italian Renaissance
• John Julius Norwich, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy

* * *

Previously:

• Queens of Infamy: Mariamne I
• Queens of Infamy: Njinga
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
• Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
• Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
• Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
• Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

For the New York Review of Books‘ daily edition, Caitlin L. Chandler examines the fallout from Italy’s new law, the Security and Immigration Decree, known as “Salvini’s Decree,” after deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini. The measure, passed last November, eradicates a class of humanitarian protections for individuals who do not qualify for refugee status, but who needed to leave their countries due to “violence, famine, or human trafficking.” According to Chandler, before the Decree, 25% of Italy’s asylum seekers avoided deportation under this category of protections. The law’s implementation has meant a rash of evictions from squats, where it’s estimated that 10,000 migrants have taken up shelter.

Chandler notes how media portrayal and racist, anti-immigrant language from leaders of Italy’s far right manipulated public opinion and drove passage of the Decree:

Although immigrants comprise only 8 percent of Italy’s population, Salvini rails against “the invasion” and has blocked rescue ships from landing at Italian ports (“porti chiusi,” he likes to brag on Twitter and Instagram, meaning “harbors closed”). Despite the fact that, since 2014, the share of crimes committed by foreigners is decreasing within every single region in Italy, anti-immigrant sentiment, stoked by Salvini’s government, is at a dangerous, all-time high.

Salvini and his party stoke fears around migration by portraying migrants as criminals. Over the past ten years, overall crime has decreased in Italy by 8.3 percent, and crimes committed by foreigners have also fallen, with convictions at an all-time low. But each time a crime occurs in an immigrant neighborhood or when non-Italian citizens stand accused, Salvini exploits it. Such was the case with the brutal rape and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl, Desirée Mariottini, in a squat in San Lorenzo, an immigrant neighborhood in Rome. Two Senagalese men, one Nigerian man, and one Ghanaian man were arrested in connection with her assault and death. Salvini visited San Lorenzo and laid a rose at her memorial, then said he would come back with a bulldozer.

The Italian public grows ever more fearful. In a 2018 study, over half of Italians greatly overestimated how many migrants were in the country. Meanwhile, in the two months after Salvini became interior minister, Italian civil society groups recorded twelve shootings, two murders, and thirty-three physical assaults against immigrants.

Read the story

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

Anne Thériault | Longreads | September 2018 | 18 minutes (4,588 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

The year was 1519. Henry VIII was king of England and still (mostly) happily married to Catherine of Aragon. The throne of France was held by Francis I, also known as “Francis of the Large Nose,” which may or may not have been a dick joke. Charles I of Spain had just become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Martin Luther was stirring up shit in Germany. And in Florence, a couple whose union represented a last-ditch coalition between France and the Pope against the ever-expanding Holy Roman Empire welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Catarina Maria Romula de’ Medici (hereafter referred to as Catherine).

Looking for a Queens of Infamy t-shirt or tote bag? Choose yours here.

I like to think of the Medicis as the Kardashians of Renaissance Europe; at the very least, they had the same intuitive understanding of how to create and exploit a personal brand. Just the mention of the Medici name conjures up images of vulgar opulence, moral decay, and murderous treachery. Machiavelli’s The Prince — the so-called “textbook for tyrants” — was dedicated to Catherine de’ Medici’s father, and it was rumored that each of her children carried a copy with them at all times. Catherine herself inspired such nicknames as the Serpent Queen, the Black Queen, the Maggot from Italy’s Tomb, and (more flatteringly) the Mother of the Modern High-Heeled Shoe. She was also called the Merchant’s Daughter, a dig at her family’s nonaristocratic origins.

Whether or not Catherine was a basilisk who covered her shimmering scales with silk and velvet is up for debate, but it’s true that the Medici dynasty had decidedly common roots. In fact, a little over a century before Catherine’s birth, the Medicis were little more than casually wealthy textile traders. I mean, they had money, but not in mind-boggling amounts. That all changed in 1397, when they started a bank and discovered a latent talent for money management. By the mid-1400s, the Banco dei Medici was the biggest bank on the continent, and the Medicis themselves were the richest family in Europe.

Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure can get you just about anything else, including various titles, marriages into noble families, a couple of popedoms, and the de facto lordship of the entire city-state of Florence. Also: a tomb designed by Michelangelo! The only problem with the Medici family’s scheme to dominate Europe was that supply couldn’t keep up with demand; even as they acquired all these positions of power, their ability to produce heirs veered into a steep decline. By the time Catherine was born, she was the only legitimate heir of the main branch of the family, and it soon became clear that she was quite possibly the last.

Catherine’s parents were Lorenzo II de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence, and Madeleine de la Tour D’Auvergne, a member of France’s noble (later on, royal) Bourbon dynasty. Their union represented an alliance between Francis I of France and Pope Leo X (Lorenzo’s uncle, born Giovanni de’ Medici) against the Holy Roman Empire (which was happily trucking along in its mission to Fuck Shit Up in Europe). Lorenzo and Madeleine’s marriage had a fairytale-like quality; both were young, beautiful, and, by all accounts, deeply in love. The wedding, hosted by Francis, involved ten days of banquets, masques, balls, jousts, and tournaments. When, just a few months later, Madeleine announced that she was pregnant, the pope and the king of France were beyond delighted that all their schemes were panning out.

FRANCIS I: fuck their fucking empire

LEO X: yes, fuck it

FRANCIS I: fuck England and Spain, also

LEO X: lol

LEO X: isn’t Spain … a part of the holy roman empire?

FRANCIS I: yes, but fuck it especially

Sadly, their gloating would be short-lived.

Lorenzo fell ill in the autumn of 1518, and was bedridden by the time Catherine was born on April 13, 1519. Madeleine’s health also plummeted shortly after her daughter’s birth. She died on April 28, and Lorenzo soon followed on May 4. Their causes of death are unclear — in Lorenzo’s case, it’s speculated that he died from tuberculosis, syphilis, or a combination of both, and Madeleine is thought to have suffered from puerperal fever, the plague, or possibly also syphilis. Whatever the cause, Catherine was left orphaned at just three weeks old.

* * *

The people of Florence quickly warmed to their tiny orphan overlord and gave her the nickname Duchessina, although the fact that Catherine was a girl all but guaranteed that she would never inherit her father’s title. But even if hot gender nonsense meant that Catherine couldn’t fulfill Francis and Leo’s plans, she was still a valuable pawn. (The rule of Florence would eventually go to Alessandro de’ Medici, who contemporaries considered to be Lorenzo’s illegitimate son, although modern historians think he was the son of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII; Alessandro’s mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a woman of African descent who is variously described as a servant or slave in the Medici household, and Alessandro was the first Black head of state in modern Europe).

Get the Longreads Top 5 Email

Kickstart your weekend by getting the week’s best reads, hand-picked and introduced by Longreads editors, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.

Sign up now

Francis wanted to raise Catherine in the French court but Leo strongly disagreed, mostly because he was about to burn that bridge by allying himself with the Holy Roman Empire. Quel scamp! Leo brought Catherine to Rome and put her in the care of her grandmother, Alfonsina Orsini; after Alfonsina’s death, Catherine went to live with her aunt Clarice de’ Medici. Things were stable for approximately one year before Leo died and was succeeded as pope by Adrian VI, a pious hardliner with strong ties to the Empire. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who had expected to win the papal election, hurriedly left Rome for Florence, bringing Catherine and her cousins Alessandro and Ippolito with him. It was the fourth time her life had been completely uprooted in as many years.

Adrian VI died in 1523 (“live hard, die fast” apparently being the motto of most 16th-century popes), and Giulio finally acceded to the papal throne as Clement VII. The Medicis, whose position in Italy had been somewhat precarious under a non-Medici pope, breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was going to be cool again, right? Well, no, not exactly — Clement had shifted the papal alliances once more and formed a league with France, England, Florence, and Venice against the Holy Roman Empire. Some shit was about to go down.

In 1527, the Empire defeated France in Northern Italy, and shortly thereafter realized they didn’t have enough money to feed or pay their troops. This is why charismatic leaders need meticulous employees to crunch their numbers for them! You can only coast on charm for so long before real life catches up with you and you have to pay all the angry peasants you’d hired to fight out all your petty grudges. The upshot of all this was a bunch of hungry, furious soldiers on the road to Rome, many of whom were Lutherans who had a personal beef with the pope.

People who want you to commit to long-term projects will tell you that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you know what? It wasn’t sacked in a day, either. The Imperial forces really took their time to get the murdering and desecrating exactly right. I mean, if you’re going to destroy a metropolis nicknamed The Eternal City, you’d better give it the ruin it deserves. For seven months Rome was systematically flattened into the world’s largest outdoor toilet. Eventually hunger and a plague epidemic drove the occupying forces from the city; from there, they headed north to Florence, where a revolt against the Medici rule of the city was already underway. Sackings for everyone!

As the violence mounted, Ippolito and Alessandro de’ Medici were spirited out of the city, leaving Catherine behind with her aunt. Nothing says “boys are assets and girls are liabilities” quite like saving the young male heirs in your family and leaving the girls and women behind to face a murderous mob.

Catherine was taken hostage and placed in the Santa Lucia convent, an institution famous for its hatred of the Medicis. She was deeply unhappy there, although apparently not quite unhappy enough to suit her captors, who soon moved her to the convent of Santa Caterina of Siena, a place contemporaries described as a “disease-ridden hovel.” After a bit of a fuss by the French ambassador (France, after all, still had a vested interest in the Duchessina), Catherine was relocated to the Murate Monastery, where she would live in relative comfort and happiness from the time she was 8 until a few months after her 11th birthday.

Help us fund our next story

We’ve published hundreds of original stories, all funded by you — including personal essays, reported features, and reading lists.

Become a member

At some point after joining the Florentine insurrection the Imperial army had gone home, but in 1528 they were back in Italy, trouncing the French once again. By this point, Clement VII realized that he had badly miscalculated which horse to bet on, and quickly switched his allegiance back to the Holy Roman Empire. In 1529, Clement VII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed a treaty in which the pope promised to crown Charles emperor in return for his help restoring his family to power (Charles was already the Holy Roman Emperor, of course, but being crowned by a pope gave him that extra sheen of divine respectability). Which is how the Imperial army wound up besieging Florence in 1529 in order to restore the Medici family to power just two years after participating in the revolt against them. Truly, time is a flat circle or something.

From some perspectives — namely those of the Imperial Army, Charles V, and the pope — the siege went pretty well! Others — the citizens of Florence, and also probably Catherine — didn’t think quite so highly of it. The hunger and disease that the siege brought with it only heightened the existing hatred of the Medici family, and the Florentines increasingly found a vector for their outrage in their young Duchessina. Some people called for her death. Some said that Catherine should be placed naked outside of the city walls, where she would either halt the Imperial barrage or else accidentally be killed by her own allies. One extremely charming suggestion involved her being left in a military brothel, where she would be raped by soldiers and thus no longer of marriageable value to the pope.

Eventually the rebel council decided to send Catherine back to the Santa Lucia convent, at least for the time being, since the Murate convent was a pro-Medici establishment that would likely allow the Imperial forces to rescue the girl. Certain that this latest move was an elaborate cover for her execution, Catherine cut off all her hair and put on a nun’s habit in a last-ditch effort to save herself. She thrashed and kicked at the man who had been sent to transport her before screaming out, “Let us now see what excommunicated wretch will dare to drag a spouse of Christ from her monastery!” As she was taken through the streets of Florence, a furious crowd gathered to scream abuse and death threats at her. It was a terrifying experience, one that Catherine would relive several times during her long and eventful life.

* * *

After the Imperial Army defeated the rebels in Florence and lifted the siege, Clement VII brought Catherine back to a (newly refurbished and Imperial Army-free) Rome in hopes that a few years in the Papal court would give her the polish she needed to hook a noble husband. Although she was frequently described as bright, witty, and well-mannered, many contemporary observers made a point of remarking that Catherine wasn’t conventionally attractive, proving that the brand of dude who loudly declares that he would never stoop to marry Rihanna has always existed. Much to the dismay of all the men who pooh-poohed Catherine’s “protuberant eyes,” the pope managed to make an extremely advantageous match between her and Francis I’s second son, Henri.

FRANCIS I: I’m confused

FRANCIS I: are we still in a fight?

CLEMENT VII: idk

CLEMENT VII: but listen, I put together a pretty exclusive dowry package

CLEMENT VII: it includes several cities that have cheeses named after them

The wedding took place in Marseilles on October 28, 1533, and it was a Whole Thing. Francis and Clement were intent on out-lavishing each other — at one point, the pope presented the king with a unicorn’s horn mounted in gold, and Francis gifted Catherine’s cousin Ippolito with a live lion. Catherine’s hair and velvet robes were encrusted with gems. Francis wore a white satin robe and a cloak of cloth of gold, embroidered all over with fleurs de lys and pearls. On a scale of one to ten, Catherine’s wedding was a Level Eleven Medici Event. It was some Deep Medici Shit. In astrological terms, it was a Medici sun with a Medici moon and also Medici rising.

On their wedding night, Catherine and Henri — both 14 years old — retired to a sumptuously decorated bed for their coucher, which is french for “first boning.” Francis decided he should stick around and watch because he was a weirdo pervert he wanted to make sure they consummated their marriage. He stayed until he was satisfied that “each had shown valor in the joust,” which is a weird metaphor because as far as I know, sex is not a contest where partners ride around on horses and try to violently knock each other down with pointy sticks. On the other hand, who knows what Francis does in his personal life?

CATHERINE: things are finally looking up!

CATHERINE: I’ve more than fulfilled my obligations by marrying an actual prince

CATHERINE: no one wants to dangle me naked in front of a besieging army

CATHERINE: God has at last granted me peace and stability

GOD: lol

GOD: sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but

GOD: lol

On September 25, 1534, Clement VII died after several months of illness. This posed several problems for Catherine. No longer the niece of a pope, her status at the French court plummeted. To make matters worse, her dowry was only partly paid and the new pope, Paul III, refused to make good on the rest of it. Francis, who had been excitedly making plans for all the Italian territory he was about to acquire, now had to come to terms with the fact that he would own none of it. Catherine, once the sole heir to the wealthiest family on the continent, was now worthless, at least from a political standpoint. The French were furious.

Catherine knew that the best way to secure her future in France was to have a child with Henri. Francis I’s eldest son, also named Francis, was as yet unmarried; this meant that if Henri had any sons, they would be directly in the line of succession. A child would also have made it much more difficult for Henri to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, as some people suggested he should do. Yet try as she might, Catherine couldn’t seem to get pregnant. Part of the problem was that Henri wasn’t all that interested in his new bride — in fact, he was in love with another woman, Diane de Poitiers, widow of the Grand-Sénéschal of Normandy and 19 years Henri’s senior.

Let us pause here and have a brief word about Henri, who, like his wife, had experienced a deeply traumatic childhood. Things had started out well enough, but in 1525, when Henri was 6, shit went sideways. During the same war with the Holy Roman Empire that had led to the sacking of Rome, Francis I was captured during the Battle of Pavia. The French king didn’t feel that he could serve his people well as a prisoner, so he offered up two of his sons as hostages until the ransom could be paid. Henri was 7 and his brother Francis, the Dauphin (heir to the French throne), was 8 when they were sent to Spain in exchange for their father. There, they would spend the next four and a half years in a series of increasingly bleak prison cells. Unsurprisingly, the experience affected the young boys profoundly.

When Henri and the Dauphin returned to the French court, everyone remarked on how changed they both appeared. Whereas before they’d been spirited and outgoing, now they were sombre and aloof. After his initial joy over his sons’ return had passed, Francis I quickly grew impatient with them, saying he had no time for “dreamy, sullen, sleepy children.”

FRANCIS I: would it kill you to smile once in a while?

FRANCIS I: what’s your problem?

HENRI: what’s my problem? are you fucking kidding me?

FRANCIS I: look at your younger brother Charles! So happy! So carefree!

FRANCIS I: why can’t you be more like him?

HENRI: CHARLES IS HAPPY BECAUSE HE DIDN’T SPEND FOUR YEARS LIVING IN A LITERAL PRISON CELL

FRANCIS I: looks like someone caught a bad attitude while he was out of the country!

Since it was still several centuries before the invention of psychotherapy, Henri tried to work through his issues by throwing himself into activities like hunting, jousting, and other sports that involved physical violence. Also tennis, which the French called jeu de paume. (The nobility were all really into tennis at the time; it was an obsession that would end badly for them when the Third Estate, some two and a half centuries later, discovered the tennis court at Versailles.)

In spite of Henri’s efforts to channel his feelings into traditionally masculine pursuits, he couldn’t seem to win his father’s approval. Among other perceived slights from his son, Francis lamented that Henri just wasn’t French enough. The years in prison had marked Henri in more ways than one, and his accent, manners, and taste in clothing were all notably Spanish. In an effort to combat this, Francis put Henri under the care of Diane de Poitiers, a member of the queen’s household who was renowned for her style and beauty — you know, French things. It wasn’t long before Henri was deeply smitten with her.

Henri was not particularly good at any form of deception, and he was as artless about his love for Diane as he was about any other feeling — including his complete indifference toward his wife. It wasn’t long before everyone at court knew what was going on. Catherine, meanwhile, publicly kept up the appearance of wedded bliss while privately cherishing a grudge against Diane. She knew that her situation was too shaky to make any kind of move against her rival, but she also knew that there would be a day when she could have her revenge.

* * *

Life continued in this holding pattern for a few years — Catherine pursuing Henri, Henri pursuing Diane, and Diane pursuing the lifestyle of a chaste court widow — until 1536, when the Dauphin collapsed after a game of tennis and died shortly thereafter. The Valois family immediately suspected that poison was responsible, since the Dauphin had drunk a glass of water brought to him by his secretary, Sebastian de Montecuculli, just before falling ill. There were a few other facts that made Montecuculli seem especially guilty: he had formerly been employed by Charles V, a book about poisons was found in his room, and also he was Italian. Everyone knew Italians were famous poisoners.

And how did Montecuculli wind up working for the Dauphin in the first place?

He had been in Catherine’s retinue when she had come to France.

The French already disliked Catherine, and the news about the Dauphin’s death brought their hatred to a fever pitch. After all, they reasoned, who stood to benefit the most from the Dauphin’s death? None other than Henri and Catherine, the new Dauphin and Dauphine of France.

Francis was utterly destroyed by his eldest son’s death, his grief compounded by remorse for his poor treatment of the princes since their return from captivity in Spain. It’s like they always say: hug your loved ones today, because tomorrow they might be poisoned by agents of the Holy Roman Empire.

The king, hell-bent on vengeance, decided to bring Montecuculli in for questioning (read: torture). Montecuculli was savvy enough to know that denying the charges meant that he would be subjected to hours of pain; he confessed almost immediately, saying that he had been hired by the Emperor to kill both the king and the Dauphin.

FRANCIS I: case closed!

FRANCIS I: not only am I a great king and a great father

FRANCIS I: I am also a great detective

FRANCIS I: is there anything I can’t do?

FRANCIS I: the other day I drew a pretty decent-looking horse, so

FRANCIS I: I think it’s pretty clear that I’m great at everything I try

Even though Montecuculli later recanted, Francis went ahead and had him executed. Fortunately for Catherine, her name hadn’t come up during the confession, and Francis chose to ignore the rumors that she was behind the murder — probably in part because that would have meant implicating Henri, who was the one who stood to secure the most from his brother’s death. Catherine had not gained much out of the whole affair other than a new reputation for treachery and increased pressure to bear Henri a child. Since Henri’s brother Charles was still unmarried, the entire future of the House of Valois rested on Catherine’s ability to produce an heir.

Catherine wanted nothing more than to conceive a child, but this proved difficult, as Henri left the country almost immediately after his brother’s death. Francis had decided to assuage his grief by launching yet another military campaign against the Empire, and Henri begged to be allowed to fight. Francis at first refused, saying that it would be too great of a risk to his son’s life, but eventually relented once Henri pointed out that it was the right of the Dauphin to serve in the field. Catherine must have been especially affronted by the fact that, while he was in Italy, Henri conceived a child with a woman named Filippa Duci. Being the kind of person who wants to make sure the salt is rubbed nice and deep into the wound, Henri pointed out that this meant that the lack of royal heir was all Catherine’s fault. He also christened his new daughter Diane, after Diane de Poitiers, and gave the child to his favorite to raise.

DIANE DE POITIERS: thank you for this … baby?

HENRI: you’re welcome!

HENRI: I know how much women love babies

HENRI: so it’s, like, a symbol of my love for you

DIANE DE POITIERS: truly, every young girl dreams of someday growing up to raise the natural child of a man who claims to be in love with her

HENRI: that’s what I heard, yeah

Henri and Diane’s relationship had been outwardly chaste (if extremely passionate, at least on Henri’s side) before his departure for the war. It was when he returned, 18 years old and a seasoned fighter, that things started to heat up. Diane discarded any pretense of being a celibate widow and lived openly as the Dauphin’s mistress. Henri, who was constitutionally incapable of doing anything by half measures, began to dress in Diane’s colors and covered everything he owned with a special monogram that interlaced H and D. He also chose a crescent moon (a reference to the goddess Diana) as his device and “Until it fills the whole world” as his motto.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: that’s fine

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: you two can have your cute in-jokes

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I have my own motto and I don’t need yours

HENRI: you mean that line about being a happy little ray of sunshine?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it actually says “I bring light and serenity” under a picture of a rainbow

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: because I am an incredibly happy person

HENRI: babe, your nails are digging into your palms so hard that you’re bleeding

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: so. fucking. happy.

In spite of her misery, Catherine managed to settle into an outwardly comfortable relationship with Diane. This arrangement was mutually beneficial: Diane knew that another woman in Catherine’s place would put up much more of a stink about her husband’s mistress; Catherine was terrified of displeasing Henri and losing what little affection he showed her.

* * *

The uneasy balance between the Dauphine and the favorite solidified when a lesser royal faction, the House of Guise, began a not-so-secret campaign to have the young Dauphine replaced by the beautiful and young Louise of Guise. The Guises claimed descendancy from Charlemagne and were infamous intriguers and social climbers; they’d already managed to marry their way into the house of Bourbon and the crown of Scotland. With Catherine at the nadir of her powers — seemingly barren, ignored by her husband, eclipsed by the Dauphin’s favorite — it must have seemed like the perfect opportunity to place their relative on the throne. This plan was supported by Francis’ mistress, the Duchess of Étampes, who felt that Diane was gaining too much power at court. Like Diane, the Duchess knew that to unseat Catherine would threaten her rival’s position.

As for the Dauphin, at first he didn’t much care whether Catherine stayed or went; he was in love with Diane, and assumed he would figure out a way to be with her no matter who he was married to. So it was up to Catherine and her nemesis to figure out how to save the former.

Diane came out swinging in Catherine’s defense, enumerating the Dauphine’s many sterling qualities to anyone who would listen. She emphasized Catherine’s youth and the many years of fertility she might have in front of her. She convinced Henri to finally take his wife’s side by implying that to do otherwise was to play right into the hands of his father’s mistress, whom he loathed.

But having Henri on Catherine’s side was not enough. The final decision rested with the king himself. With his mistress set against the Dauphine, it would be hard to talk Francis into siding with his son’s wife.

It was a do-or-die situation, and Catherine decided to gamble everything. She collapsed at Francis’ feet, tears streaming down her face. She wailed that her husband deserved a queen who could bear his children, and asked only that she be allowed to serve as the new Dauphine’s lady-in-waiting. Please, wouldn’t the king just replace her but let her stay in France in the lowly position that was her due?

Catherine knew that there was nothing left for her in Italy — no uncle-pope, no place as Duchess of Florence, and certainly no advantageous marriage to make. She also knew that if Louise de Guise became Dauphine, she would almost certainly dispense with Henri’s former wife as soon as she could. If the king took her at her word, she would be ruined. Her entire future rested on Francis’ reputed soft spot for young women’s tears. Would he come through? Or had she gravely miscalculated?

Read Part Two: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Catherine de’ Medici:
Leonie Frieda, Catherine de’ Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise And Fall
Mary Hollingsworth, The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy