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Historical person
1431–1503
Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, was pope from 1492 until 1503. A skilled administrator and politician, he also became notorious for nepotism, openly advancing his children Cesare and Lucrezia and using papal power to strengthen the Borgia family during the Italian Wars.
His pontificate included artistic patronage, diplomatic manoeuvring and attempts to control central Italy, but later polemic turned the Borgia court into a symbol of Renaissance corruption and sexual scandal. Alexander VI also worked as Dean of the College of Cardinals, Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Valencia. Alexander VI was born in Xàtiva and died in Rome.
In Sarah Dunant’s Blood & Beauty, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia secures election as Pope Alexander VI and enters office as a wealthy Spanish outsider in a city dominated by Italian families. In Cecelia Holland’s City of God, Nicholas Dawson is the highly educated secretary to Ercole Bruni, Florence’s ineffective ambassador at the court of Pope Alexander VI. Nicholas quietly rewrites diplomatic correspondence to compensate for his employer’s failures and uses access to the Roman Curia to advance his own political understanding. Further fictional perspectives on Alexander VI can be found in Sarah Dunant’s In the Name of the Family, Simon Turney’s The Assassin’s Tale, Kate Quinn’s The Lion and the Rose, Kate Quinn’s The Serpent and the Pearl, and C. W. Gortner’s The Vatican Princess.
Series
The Borgia Chronicles follow Giulia Farnese from her marriage into the Orsini family to her position as the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia, elected Pope Alexander VI in 1492. Her fictional companions Carmelina and Leonello provide views of Vatican kitchens, security and the dangers surrounding the papal household. Across…
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Sarah Dunant’s Borgias novels reconstruct the rise and collapse of Pope Alexander VI’s family in Renaissance Italy. Beginning with Rodrigo Borgia’s election in 1492, the sequence follows Alexander, Cesare and Lucrezia as papal office, dynastic marriage and military ambition turn family loyalty into an instrument of government. Across…
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The Ottoman Cycle follows the Greek brothers Skiouros and Lykaion after conscription separates them within the recently conquered city of Constantinople. One escapes into the streets while the other enters the Janissaries, placing their relationship on opposite sides of the political and religious order created by Mehmed II…
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Rozsa Gaston’s four-volume Anne of Brittany sequence follows the last independently ruling Duchess of Brittany from her contested inheritance to her final years as queen of France. The novels move through the French–Breton conflict, Anne’s compelled marriage to Charles VIII, her restoration to ducal authority after his death…
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This two-volume novel sequence follows Lucrezia Borgia from her youth in the scandalous papal court of Alexander VI through the marriages, rivalries and political bargains that shaped her adult life. Against the factional politics of Renaissance Italy, Jean Plaidy presents Lucrezia as both a member of a feared…
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Standalone books
