Blood & Beauty

Rome, 1492. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia secures election as Pope Alexander VI and enters office as a wealthy Spanish outsider in a city dominated by Italian families. To protect the papacy and advance his bloodline, he deploys his children as political assets: Cesare is confined to a cardinal’s career despite his military ambition, while Lucrezia is drawn into marriages designed to secure alliances.

As the French invasion of Italy destabilises the peninsula, the Borgias answer danger with diplomacy, patronage, intimidation and violence. The novel follows the family from private intimacy to public scandal, showing how Alexander’s appetite for power, Cesare’s growing ruthlessness and Lucrezia’s enforced obedience become inseparable from the wars and rivalries of Renaissance Italy.