num_pages: 596
description: By the end of the fifteenth century the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph this charismatic consummate politician with a huge appetite for life women and power must use papacy and familyin particular his eldest son Cesare and his daughter Lucreziain order to succeed.Cesare with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul is his greatestthough increasingly unstableweapon. Later immortalized in Machiavellis The Prince he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia beloved by both men is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens hers is a journey through three marriages and from childish innocence to painful experience from pawn to political player.
language: English
title: Blood & Beauty: The Borgias
publisher: Random House