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Forlivese Knights — Description

Agghhhhh godsdammit fine. I really should've learned my lesson by now that trying to cheat my own system and skip over some history by lumping it in with another faction sheet is just going to tempt me down a rabbit hole which'll always convince me to tackle that subject on its own anyway. Let's talk about Forlì because I'm my own schedule's worst enemy.
The modern settlement of Forlì was established in 188 BCE by Roman consul Gaius Livius Salinator, as a major stopping point along the Via Aemilia. He named the city “Forum Livii”, after himself, because as we all know, Roman men all had incredibly large penises and had absolutely zero need to remind everyone of that fact at every conceivable opportunity. For the history of Forlì as a medieval city-state though, we have to begin in a much later period of Roman history. Being just a stone's throw away from the old capital of the Western Empire, Forlì was a major population center under the administration of Byzantine Ravenna after history's greatest badass, Belisarius, took back all of Justinian's Italian shit from the Visigoths and their half-elf king in the 6th century. Unfortunately, Justinian's own reign saw the reunification of the Roman Empire reduced to little more than a Byzantine pipe dream. Within ten years of the legendary emperor's death in 565, the newest brand of barbarian horde hitting shelves, the Lombards, took advantage of Rome's strained resources to take much of northern Italy for themselves, including Forlì in 742. Since they couldn't rely on distant Constantinople for relief, Pope Stephen II called on the Frankish king Pepin the Short to come to the rescue. Pepin took up the responsibility and drove the Lombards out in 756, and in return for being so generous as to allow the French to ransack Italy, Pepin donated a weirdly-shaped chunk of the central peninsula directly to the ownership of the Vatican. The Papal States were thus born, and Forlì was one of many scattered townships incorporated under the Pope’s rule. Forlì, however, never agreed to this arrangement, and they weren't particularly happy about some French fuck donating their city to some boil-ridden bishop, so it proclaimed itself an independent republic in 889.
Now I know what you're thinking: wow Ava, you're a remarkably beautiful and intelligent young lady, and any woman would be lucky to have you, and well thank you, I needed to hear that today. After that though, you might think wow, that'd make Forlì one of the oldest independent republics in Italy after the collapse of the Roman Empire! That's a pretty critical development in the history of medieval politics and I'd love to read my favorite content creator Avapithecus fall into an existential dread over how hypocritically, if ahead of its time, this republic operated! And well, I would love to overanalyse this intriguing episode of history for you, but I've hit a snag in that not a goddamn person, website, or book, in the whole vast ocean of the internet, has deigned to elaborate any further on the exact reasons why Forlì split off from the Papal States or the next 400 fucking years of drama that surely must've ensued. At most, you'll get a mention that this city was a fiercely Ghibelline (pro-Holy Roman Empire) island in a sea of hostile Guelphs (pro-Pope), lending their support to Emperor Frederick II in capturing the rival city of Faenza in 1241. That's why Forlì has a big HRE eagle slapped across their coat of arms to this day, a show of loyalty from the Hohenstaufen king. If nothing else, it's clear that this Papal State had absolutely zero interest in having anything to do with the Pope, and spent the better part of four centuries dicking the old bastard's grand plans in the ass, which hey look, I'm all for.
The juicy meat of the story picks up in 1303, however, with the ascendancy of Scarpetta Ordelaffi as Lord of Forlì. The exact route he took to get there is a little lost to time, but he was a popular war hero in the service of the Ghibelline mercenaries who had gotten into spats with nearby Bologna, Imola, and most importantly, Florence. Scarpetta made it a point to welcome political exiles from these cities into his walls and recruit them to his cause, including one Dante Alighieri, who during his stay remarked that Forlì was “under the green branches”, a reference to the Ordelaffi family crest. It's clear that even though they weren't technically lords yet, Scarpetta only being made Capitano del Popolo in 1307, it's obvious that the Ordelaffi were the ones in charge. They did not go uncontested, though. Scarpetta was overthrown and imprisoned by Papal agents in 1311, and though his brother Cecco managed to reclaim the family's power in 1315, he too was ousted by the Vatican in 1332. Their nephew, Cecco II, was the one who truly secured the family's dominance over not just Forlì, but neighboring Cesena as well. This made the Papacy very antsy about losing territory, which I find hilarious, because at this point in history, the Pope had moved the entire church to France and left Rome itself largely to its own devices while the cardinals got fat on sucking snails.
One of those cardinals, however, was graciously not French. He was a Spaniard named Gil Alvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, and before he studied the Bible, he had a degree in kicking ass. In other words, he was the Pope’s number one pick to send over to Italy and remind everyone who was in charge because the Pope was too lazy to do it himself. After a brutally dragged out siege in 1357, which saw Cecco's own wife Cia charge into battle on an armored horse, Cecco was forced to cede Cesena to Albornoz, and in 1369 he was kicked out of Forlì entirely. The goal of taking back what the Ordelaffi saw as theirs passed to Cecco's son, Sinibaldo, who, with the support of Florence and Milan, entered the city and reestablished the lordship in 1376.
Now ideally, a secured reign really should mean the Ordelaffi sat down at the brass tax table and hammered out a nest egg for future prosperity. That however assumes that rich and powerful people have even a single neuron devoted to the idea of quitting while they're ahead. So, instead of a happily ever after for Forlì, Sinibaldo was imprisoned by his nephews, Pino and a third Cecco, until his miserable death in 1386. Pino was, in turn, assassinated by his wife in 1402, and Cecco III was lynched by the angry mob which took the time out of their day to also overthrow his government in 1405. Clearly specializing in just banging their fucking heads into a wall repeatedly until it actually works, the Ordelaffi regained power again with the counter-coup launched by Giorgio Ordelaffi in 1411. The most important thing he ever did was die in 1423, leaving a claim to Imola to be duked out between his wife, Lucrezia Alidosi (who was daughter to the rightful lord of Imola), and Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan and preincarnate Discord mod to whom Giorgio had said “ehhhh fuck it you can have Imola if you can take it, go wild man.”
That statement basically imploded Italy, dragging Florence and Venice into a much bigger conflict with Milan which left Giorgio's son and successor Teobaldo completely screwed from the start. The Duke of Milan took Imola and Forlì for himself cause hey fuck it he was in the area, until the Venetians threatened his border and he decided that Forlì was so unimportant to his overall conquests that he just kinda gave it to Pope Martin V in 1426 so as not to be bothered. Now luckily for the Ordelaffi, the only thing that the people of Forlì hated more than their family coming in every five minutes to usurp the republic was the Pope. In 1433, a popular revolt overthrew the Venetian bishop in charge of governing the city, a man named Tommaso, installing Antonio Ordelaffi as the new lord to thunderous applause. Unfortunately, all this really accomplished was pissing off both the Church and the Milanese, who shook hands, made out, and in 1436 agreed to band together just to dick over Forlì again. At least Forlì must be used to it by now.
Antonio was eventually able to convince the Pope that he was chill in 1447, just a year before he died and passed his title onto his son, yet another little shit named Cecco. Cecco's shit ass little brother, Pino, thought that this was bullshit, so he had Cecco poisoned in 1466 just to feel what that cushy chair would feel like on his own ass. While he was at it, Pino also poisoned his wife, his own mother, his second wife, and was eventually himself poisoned in 1480… by his third wife, who I think might’ve been picking up on a pattern. When he wasn't being a murderous despot, Pino is remembered as a great patron of the arts, so I guess that just balances everything out, don't it? He was also responsible for commissioning architect Giorgio Marchesi Fiorentino to construct the modern foundations of Forlì's nigh-impenetrable fortress, the Rocca di Ravaldino, in 1471, which ironically is less important to the Ordelaffi narrative, as that's about to be cut short very abruptly.
Let's rewind a bit to 1473. Florence's magnificently famous Lorenzo de’ Medici, one of the richest and most powerful men in Italy, was in talks with his buddy Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the freshest Duke of Milan, to buy the city of Imola. Pope Sixtus IV, however, wanted it even more, so he outbid Lorenzo by offering the hand of his nephew, Girolamo Riario, in marriage to Sforza's daughter Caterina. Sforza agreed, he sold Imola to Sixtus, Lorenzo whined like a bitch, and the Pope tried to have him assassinated, I've been over this story before. When Pino was killed, it left his preteen son alone in a world where he had no dad to tell him why girls were making him feel funny now or bestow any semblance of real power to contest Sixtus's move into Forlì. The Ordelaffi were more or less ousted for good, replaced now with the Pope’s slimey nepo-baby.
Well, scratch that, we all know it was his wife Caterina Sforza who ran the entire fuckin show in Forlì and Imola. While Riario pissed away the city's tax revenue, Caterina ran the administration with a girl-boss energy which history hadn't seen since Theodora. The Vatican didn't really like this, because you see girls have cooties, so after Riario's assassination in 1488, the acting governor for the Papal States, Giovanni Battista Savelli, stormed into Forlì to assert their dominance. He captured Caterina and her children to use as leverage in persuading Ravaldino's commander, Tommaso Feo, to surrender the fortress. Tommaso agreed to come down to the negotiating table only if he could speak to Caterina in private first. Seeing as how Savelli had a knife to Caterina's kids’ throats, he allowed her to go inside as requested. Caterina then appeared on top of the battlements, refusing to surrender and spewing insults at the besieging army. When told her children would be killed for this trickery, Caterina hoisted her gown, flashed her cooch, and told them lmao kill my kids, I've got the tools to make more.
Scared shitless of this fucking tigress, Savelli's army politely fucked off, leaving Caterina free to… kinda shoot herself in the foot. Everyone loved her at first, until she got the town a shitty abusive stepfather in the form of the cucked Tommaso Feo's own brother Giacomo. The people had Giacomo assassinated in 1495, and Caterina was left scrambling to find a big strong boyfriend to help her ward off the tidal wave of French soldiers who invaded Italy in 1499. The new Borgia Pope’s son, Cesare, besieged Forlì and Imola in December, and had Ravaldino's (and… Caterina's… ew) walls breached by January. Caterina was thrown in the Vatican's dungeon (btw the Vatican has a dungeon) until 1501 when, broken mentally and physically, she conceded to signing away her claim to her realm to the Church. She died in exile in Florence, having tried and failed to persuade her son Ottaviano to go to war and reclaim what was rightfully his, but Ottaviano had long since resigned himself to the life of a clergyman. In many ways, this embodied the fate of Forlì, now forever to remain a forgotten corner of the Papal States until the Risorgimento. The only other thing of historical note to happen in Forlì after this was Bennito Mussolini getting his disgusting bunioned goosefeet wet in the political pool by participating in his neighborhood government. Good sweet Freyr, can we please just raise Caterina Sforza from the dead instead. Honestly even her lifeless corpse sitting limp at the administrative desk would have more value to society.
Design notes, Aaaaaava fess up. Did you actually concede to doing this sheet just because you wanted to draw more hot babes in historical armor? …Maybe. Look, history has been a total sausage fest so far, so unless one of you is gonna hook me up with a girlfriend, I gotta use my pen for my own needs sometimes okay? Gods, so nosey. Also I just really liked the color palette of the Ordelaffi coat of arms and wanted to play around with it. Unfortunately, I'm only just now realizing it's the same color palette as Starry, and this fact has forever soured my palette, because Starry tastes like carbonated feet and should never be attached to a soda fountain just so it can mischievously pretend it's an acceptable substitute for Sprite. Look Pepsi, I'm normally on your team, but what in the goddamn fuck is this shit? “Ava you've cheated in your design notes paragraph by turning it into a rant about soft drinks.” Yes, yes I have. I have to move apartments next Monday at the time of writing this, and this is the last thing on my to-do list before packing. Now if you'll excuse me, me and my babes in historical armor are gonna take a quick detour into the incognito tab and crash after one hell of a night.