Cesare Borgia

Cesare Borgia was a son of Pope Alexander VI who abandoned an ecclesiastical career to become a soldier and territorial prince during the Italian Wars. Initially made a cardinal, he resigned the cardinalate in 1498 and, with French support, began campaigns to create a Borgia dominion in central Italy. As duke of Valentinois and commander of papal forces he conquered a series of Romagnol lordships, using diplomacy, intimidation and carefully staged violence to weaken rival elites.

By 1502–03 Cesare controlled much of the Romagna and attempted to impose a more centralised administration, but his power depended heavily on his father’s papacy. Alexander VI’s death in 1503 destroyed that foundation. Cesare was outmanoeuvred by the new pope Julius II, arrested, transferred to Spain and eventually escaped to the service of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. He was killed at Viana in 1507. Machiavelli’s The Prince later made his rise and collapse a classic case study in political power and fortune.

Sarah Dunant’s Blood & Beauty and In the Name of the Family place Cesare at the centre of Borgia dynastic politics, while Cecelia Holland’s City of God uses the violence and diplomacy of Renaissance Rome as its setting. C. W. Gortner’s The Vatican Princess approaches the family through Lucrezia Borgia, and Rozsa Gaston’s Anne and Louis connects Cesare’s ambitions to the French interventions in Italy.