She feels a hot wave of shame in her cheeks.' We are not quite in Hilary Mantel territory here, where descriptions of a royal court shine with subtlety and intellectual ferment. 'As he looms in front of her, he seems to have grown, the black fuss of chest hair crawling up his neck from his open jerkin and his face devil dark with soot and grime. She takes it into her head to visit her new husband's foundry, a man-cave of sorts where he indulges his hobby of metalwork.

Alexander still grieves for his murdered son Juan, killed Mafia-style six years before, fished out of River Tiber 'riddled with stab wounds.' Lucrezia Borgia comes across not as the viper-vixen that legend has given us, but rather as a ripe, glowing newlywed. The pope, as we see him here, is sentimental, obese, a lion in winter, like Brando in the tomato garden of The Godfather. Niccolo, as he is called throughout, 'likes women and wine as much as politics' and 'can turn the air blue with his jokes.' He 'reads' the political machinations surrounding Cesare: 'This is theater, all of it! The mask, the lapping candles, the moonlight, the palace with the silent cowed town at his feet.' Dunant deftly humanizes the man behind the classic text. Wait a minute - a pope with a daughter? Such was the brave old world the Borgias inhabited.Īs the novel opens, Machiavelli travels as an envoy from Florence to Rome. Readers need not be familiar with the history to be intrigued by the characters: the dominating patriarch, Rodrigo Borgia, elevated in 1492 as Pope Alexander VI Cesare, the charismatic head of the papal military machine, and Lucrezia, Rodrigo's spoiled and beautiful daughter. His brutality and cunning epitomize the qualities that we think of today when we use the term Machiavellian.įor Dunant, lust for power constitutes only a part of the Borgias' story. At the height of its sharp-fanged power, Cesare Borgia thundered across the region's duchies and city-states, bloodying them thoroughly before making them his own. The family dominated the military, political and religious affairs of the period. What inspired realpolitik bare-knuckler Niccolo Machiavelli to compose his 16th century masterwork, The Prince? The real question might not be what, but whom? Cesare Borgia stands as the best candidate, at least according to In the Name of the Family, historical novelist Sarah Dunant's second work (after Blood and Beauty) devoted to the tightly knit Borgia clan. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title In the Name of the Family Author Sarah Dunant

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