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Bianca Riario — Description

Bianca Riario was the only daughter of Caterina Sforza, presumably because duplicating Caterina's roiling estrogen any further amongst the human population would be so dangerously powerful as to crack open Armageddon's stubbornly-clenched hands. Bianca was born in Rome in March 1478, the end result of the then-fifteen year old Caterina consummating her marriage with Pope Sixtus's disgusting thirty-five year old nephew, Girolamo Riario, freshly crowned Count of Forlì as a reward for being a debaucherous creep. Mind you, that's a title Bianca's parents had to fight for, as after Sixtus's death in 1484, the cardinals tried to cut the Pope’s favorite nepo-baby out of the piggy bank. Caterina, rationally, responded by storming Castel Sant'Angelo herself and threatening to have her army carpet bomb the fucking Vatican. Alright alright alright you can keep Forlì, they said, just please for the love of God call off the tigress! I can only imagine at this point Caterina smiled, sheathed her sword, bid the terrified (and probably horny) old men a good day, and politely packed up her bags and family for Forlì, where Bianca would be able to fulfill her singular purpose in life as a budding child in Renaissance Italy: get hitched to some other nose-picker.
At the age of eight, Bianca's parents promised her hand in marriage to the then-infant Astorre Manfredi, heir to the lordship of Forlì's rival neighbor, Faezna. You know, cause the little brats just have so much in common to talk about, like how she's grown to discover that unwashable glitter glue accessorizes better in her Barbie dolls’ hair than in her own human mouth, or how he's found success screaming bloody murder every time he shits his britches like a civilized gentleman. Not everyone was happy with this arrangement though. The Medici in Florence for example were concerned about the influence over Faezna which the union would grant Forlì, but really it was Bianca's father everyone was pissed off at. Girolamo Riario was a despotic ass clot who used tax payer dollars to bankrupt himself through all manner of pointless party favors. He then made the mistake of demanding money from noblemen in his court, you know, the sort of guys with enough power and influence to get away with stabbing you, unlike some lowly peasant who's just gonna get screwed over no matter who's in charge.
On April 14, 1488, Girolamo Riario was thus ambushed in his own home, stabbed to death, and chucked naked out his own window for all to see. Caterina, realizing that the sharks were starting to frenzy, barricaded herself and her children in their quarters as an angry mob united with a Papal army who wanted Forlì back in church hands. Unfortunately, the door was breached and the family was taken hostage. Caterina was dragged to the gates of Ravaldino fortress, where her castellan, Tommaso Feo, was quite literally holding down the fort. Caterina had specifically instructed Feo not to open the gates, even for her, on threat of the beating of a lifetime, so he was whipped enough not to concede to the enemy's demands. He did eventually agree to negotiate surrender, but only if he could talk it out with Caterina in private inside the fort first. Since the enemy captain had a knife to her children's necks, and Renaissance thinking would have it that no woman would ever do anything to risk the lives of her offspring, he agreed to let her inside. At that point, Caterina appeared at the top of the battlements, began shouting defiant obscenities at her captors, and when they told her they'd kill her children for this betrayal, she flashed her clam and said lmao go ahead I can always make more. Thanks mom, Bianca must've thought, you're the best parent ever.
Thankfully, the guards in charge of the kids had the basic fucking human decency to refuse to slit the kids’ throats, and when it became evident that the populace didn't have the same ire towards Caterina as they did towards her husband, the army retreated, and the children could return to their mother's love, or whatever it is Caterina felt for the expendable little parasites. I personally wouldn't call it “love” to cuck Tommaso Feo with his own brother, Giacomo, a man who saw his new step-children as little more than another man's sperm. I am so sorry Bianca, I've been there. I imagine there must've been some very complicated feelings as Bianca rode in the caravan which gave her a front row seat to the assassination of her mom's new boy toy in 1495. Caterina's feelings about it, meanwhile, were much simpler. She had the conspirators responsible rounded up and violently executed in a brutal display previously uncharacteristic for even her usual cold calculating self, and this decline into desperate madness began a chain reaction which would irreparably tear the family apart.
For starters, Bianca's wedding was called off. The now-ten-year-old Astorre was shuffled off to Forlì that December, but pretty much the second everyone turned their attention to the parade, Astorre's cousin, Ottaviano Manfredi, took the opportunity to usurp rule in Faenza in alliance with Venice. Since a ten-year-old sure as shit ain't gonna have what it takes to reclaim his throne, the entire purpose of the marriage completely evaporated overnight. Bianca therefore went unmarried and functionally useless to her mother, who was more interested in getting herself hitched to some big strong man who could ward off the incoming invasion of the French sicked on her city by Pope Alexander VI in 1499. None of the dicks Caterina rode lasted more than a few seconds though, and on January 11th, 1500, the Pope’s ruthless son, Cesare Borgia, breached the walls of Forlì, personally assaulted Caterina, and shipped her off to be locked away in the Vatican's dungeon until she agreed to play nice.
Bianca, in the midst of all of this, found shelter in Florence under the care of Giovanni de’ Medici, father of her half-brother… confusingly also named Giovanni. The elder Giovanni had died of ligma in September 1498, and his priestly friend, Francesco Fortunati of the Basilica di San Lorenzo, swore to him on his death bed that he'd look after the infant boy. To this end, Fortunati recruited Bianca into his convent, and by all reports Bianca loved her little brother as a surrogate mother. Hypothetically, she was only meant to care for him until their mother was freed from prison in June 1501 and she could reunite with her children in Florence. The Caterina that arrived in town though was a tigress long since neutered, grey, and asking first and only about Giovanni's inheritance instead of wasting any breath on her childrens’ general wellbeing. Bianca's naive perception of her mother as a stern but necessary authority figure was shattered at this point. Florence treated her better than Forlì ever did, and she had a little brother to look after now. Not only that, she had happily and independently come into a marriage with a Parmesan condottiere named Troilo de’ Rossi in 1503, styled Marquis of San Secondo by the occupying French. This is normally where I'd make a cheap joke at the expense of the French, but honestly, I'm just happy Bianca went on to live a normal, quiet life. I know from personal experience that it's an extremely difficult thing to admit that you don't owe your neglectful mother a goddamn thing.
Wholesomely, the grown up Giovanni repaid his sister for raising him so lovingly. Troilo died in June 1521, leaving his castle in San Secondo in the hands of Bianca and their children, which unfortunately was a very vulnerable position. Bernardo dei Rossi, an agent of Pope Leo X bent on conquering all the castles in Parma, threatened to take Bianca's holdings by force, and that royally fucking pissed off a Giovanni who'd grown into a strapping young warrior by this point. He raced to his sister's castles and drew a line in the sand, proclaiming “I should like to see who will come and take them from me”. When his generals took this as an opportunity to suggest Giovanni just take the castles for himself and ship his sister off to some deserted island somewhere or something, Giovanni became incensed and threatened to have them killed if they ever dare say something like that again. “I care for my sister and my nephews more than anything else in the world,” he spat, “If I live, I shall not want for castles like this and greater still”. This brave little hero proceeded to kick dei Rossi's ass and send him crawling back to whatever hole he dared to crawl out of to attack his beloved sister. Bianca was thus free to live out the remainder of her days just as she liked them, peaceful and uninterrupted, until her death some unknown time afterwards. As the sister of a brother who lived under an abusive mother, I won't lie, this biography really hit me right in the feels. Requiescat in pace, kids.
Design notes, I couldn't find any historical depictions which are explicitly of Bianca. I found plenty of NPCs singled out in bigger paintings of unrelated subject matters which are claimed to use Bianca as their model, minus the inclusion of any primary sources or rationale. That being said, I honed in on a portrait which, as best I can tell, is by 16th century artist Bastiano Mainardi and simply titled “Portrait of a Lady”, a frustratingly common anonymizing trope scattered throughout Renaissance art. Counterpoint though, if the chick in the portrait is completely anonymous anyway, then fuck it, she may as well be Bianca Riario after all. She's very pretty and I like to think Bianca was a pretty woman just based on my empathy with her life story, so this is what we're goin’ with.