Machiavelli's Hero

The L.A. Times today published a great article by Alexander Stille about the Borgias, which is timed to coincide with tomorrow's 500th Anniversary of Cesare Borgia's death:

THE NAME Borgia is synonymous with Renaissance decadence, treachery and ruthless realpolitik. The tales of the handsome and bloodthirsty condottiere Cesare Borgia; his father, Pope Alexander VI, and his sister, the beautiful Lucrezia, who may (or may not) have also been his lover, have spawned an endless number of tales, poems, novels, operas and movies.

Including, I might add, Valentino: a play in verse.

The article goes on to discuss the historical events upon which my play is based:

When Giovanni was assassinated, his brother took over his position, giving rise to the rumor that young Cesare Borgia had done Giovanni in.

A daring military adventurer, Borgia worked to strengthen the papacy's hold on central and northern Italy and to carve out what he hoped would be a kingdom for himself that might rival Venice and Naples.

Perhaps his most enduring claim on our attention is that his deeds and misdeeds attracted the notice of a young Florentine government servant named Niccolo Machiavelli, who had spent time as an emissary in Borgia's court and wrote back long reports about the young man commonly known as the Duke Valentino, one of many titles he held.

One of the most famous of the surviving reports is known as the "Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino when Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli … " in which Machiavelli, with some admiration, writes of the shrewdness with which Borgia lured his principal rivals to the town of Sinigalia and had them strangled.

Read the full article here.