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Rodrigo Borgia — Description

The human plum who'd eventually become Pope Alexander VI (or as we AC fans will always remember him: “the Spaniard”) began his greasy life as Rodrigo de Borja, a Valencian born in the city of Xàtiva on January 1, 1431. He was the son of wealthy nobleman Jofré Llançol, whom you may notice does not share a surname with his son. This is because Jofré was the husband of Isabella Borja, a woman with infinitely more valuable connections, since her brother Alfonso Borja was crowned Pope Callixtus III in April 1455. Since we all know the true key to success is not hard work, a good head on your shoulders, or genuine talent, but rather being born into a fuck load of money and power to abuse the rigged game of life with, young Rodrigo made sure to get himself adopted into his mother's family over his father's, taking the more Italian-sounding name we're all more familiar with: Rodrigo Borgia.
Uncle Pope hooked Rodrigo up with a crash course in law at the University of Bologna, and that single year of study was apparently enough to “earn” his appointment as Cardinal Deacon of Rome's San Nicola in Carcere on February 22, 1456. It then only took another year for Uncle Pope to get Rodrigo promoted further still to Vice Chancellor of the Catholic Church, which as you can imagine made Rodrigo both ludicrously rich and able to get away with as much ungodly debauchery as he so desired. Even after Uncle Pope died in 1458, no one was really gonna stop Rodrigo from using the communion bowl to fund his Renaissance frat parties. Callixtus’s successor Pius II sent Rodrigo a strongly worded letter in June 1460 tutting how unbecoming it was for a cardinal to host an orgy with several smokin’ hot married women from Siena, but since Rodrigo had effectively bought Pius's election to the pontificate, a slap on the wrist was all he was realistically getting. Maybe three Hail Maries. The two men would still stand side by side together building a Venetian fleet at Ancona to prepare for war with the Ottomans in 1464, and they'd both catch plague there. At least… probably plague. Rodrigo's physicians had a suspicion that his illness may have been contracted from last night's “visit”. At the very least, Rodrigo would live on to quash those rumors, while that old buzzkill Pius died in his sickbed.
Well shucks, thought Rodrigo, time to buy a new Pope! Maybe this time we'll get a guy you can have a beer with, someone like Paul II. He's the sort of dude-bro that wouldn't bat an eye when you make a fortune off of your thriving simony business and bang anything with a pulse. Sure, Rodrigo was promoted to the priesthood in 1468 and was therefore supposed to devote his life to celibacy, but ehhhh come on when's being a man of God ever stopped anyone from being a horny creep? By this point he'd already had at least three illegitimate children through an unknown mistress (or… mistresses), and he'd soon start messing around with prominent lady Vannozza dei Cattanei, putting him on track to add even more bastard kids to his roster. That's like close enough to holy matrimony, right?
Pope Paul II’s leniency ended when he died in 1471 and was replaced by Sixtus IV, the only man whose mastery in the craft of nepotism could rival Rodrigo's own. Rodrigo found himself competing with Sixtus's nephews Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovere for the role of court favorite, but Pietro died suspiciously of gut issues (which may or may not have actually been poison) in 1474, and Rodrigo had… plans for getting rid of Giuliano, more on that later. This isn't to say Sixtus wasn't in Rodrigo's pocket, oh no, he doted on Rodrigo, and went so far as to legitimate the four kids he had by Vannozza: Cesare (born 1475), Juan (born 1476), Lucrezia (born 1480), and Jofré (born 1481). He didn't bother legitimizing the other three because to a man like Rodrigo, his children were as much of a commodity as anything else, and Vannozza had much nobler stock to advertise than Sex Worker Extra Number 69. Hell, Vannozza herself reads more like a business acquaintance to Rodrigo than a lover. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it was good for him, but the pair got pretty distant after the kids were born. Rodrigo moved his little brats out of their mother's household to be raised by Borgia relatives elsewhere in 1483, and by 1489 he'd moved on to his next side piece: Giulia Farnese, who was… already married to Orsino Orsini… and was only fifteen. Now… look, I'm just a filthy Heathen, so what the hell do I know, but uh… I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that that wasn't very Jesus of Rodrigo-
Oh gee willikers, there's that pesky Bible getting in Rodrigo's way again. Normally he'd hit up his pipeline to God, Sixtus, but God decided to promote Sixtus to Heaven in 1484. In his place was elected this absolute loser calling himself Innocent VIII, and this was… fine? I mean it at least meant he sure as shit didn't have the competence to even think about putting the kibosh on Rodrigo's antics. The only problem was that Giuliano was still kicking around trying to butt Rodrigo out of the puppetmaster's booth. Shucks, it'd be so much easier to get away with corruption, orgies, and amassing more wealth than God if only he were Pope instead. So, when Innocent died in 1492, Rodrigo put himself forward as an electoral candidate for the holy seat cushion, by which of course I mean he greased the palms of two-thirds of the delegates with as much dirty money as four silver-laden mules could carry. It was less an election, and more an auction, and Rodrigo outbid the fuck out of Giuliano. On the morning of August 11, Rodrigo emerged from the bowels of the Papal conclave as Pope Alexander VI, and, totally coincidentally, Giuliano fled into exile in France after surviving a poisoning attempt.
Now, having said… all of that, most biographies at this point will remark that, from a strictly administrative standpoint, Rodrigo Borgia was actually a pretty adept leader whom the Roman people admired. He reportedly cracked down hard on the Eternal City's rampant crime rate and set aside every Tuesday as a time when any citizen, man or woman, could come address their grievances directly to him. Credit where credit is due, and we should be weary that the worst claims yet to come come filtered to us through his enemies, but at the same time, I don't think this is grounds to take the opposite extreme and assume oh well actually he must've been a completely stand up guy who's just misunderstood. Just because he realistically wasn't any worse than every other wealthy debaucherous Italian politician doesn't make him any better than every other wealthy debaucherous Italian politician. This is the same guy who when the Spanish discovered there was a big fancy landmass on the other side of the Atlantic full of gold to steal and cultures to destroy just kinda said “ehhh you and Portugal just have at it”, and when even that put too much trouble on his docket to be bothered with he said okay okay look, we'll draw this line here straight down the middle between the Caribbean and the easternmost coast of Brazil. Portugal gets everything to the east of this line, and Spain gets everything to the west of that line. Thank God this is just India we're bickering about and not some massive unexplored continent, otherwise the Treaty of Tordesillas would be extremely shortsighted and have completely unforeseen geopolitical consequences on the rest of human history as we know it hahahahahahaha”.
But hey, you're not here for a complicated analysis of historical documents or a philosophical debate on whether it's better to be feared or loved, you're here cause you wanna read me take the piss out of the Pope. So back into Rodrigo's nepotism, one of the cardinals he'd bribed out of the Pope race, Asconio Sforza, was now serving as Rodrigo's vice-chancellor, and he had a pesky problem. See, Sforza's brother Ludovico il Moro, had a sweet gig running the Duchy of Milan as regent for his nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, and it'd be totally lame if he had to give up all that power and money once Gian came of age. Asconio was in Rodrigo's ear to make sure that didn't happen, and this made poor Gian stomp his foot and pout. While he was too much of a pussy to actually do anything about the theft of his title, Gian's wife Isabella was not, because she was the granddaughter of Ferrante, King of Naples, who was very interested in getting Gian's ass back in that fancy chair using a lot of sharp pointy things that'd make the Pope's friends say owie. Now thankfully, before that could happen, the Pope came to an agreement with the Neapolitans. Then, extremely conveniently, old man Ferrante kicked the bucket in 1494 and Gian was fatally poisoned a few months later. On paper, this sounds like the perfect situation for Rodrigo, but there was one small hiccup: that eternally confounding itch, the French.
See, King Charles VIII had a claim to Naples which Rodrigo wasn't down with. When Rodrigo crowned Alfonso II as Ferrante's successor instead, the French started pulling the exiled Giuliano out of their back pocket, you know, just in case Rodrigo happened to meet a “very convenient accident” of his own in the ensuing conflict. Rodrigo lost allies so fast that he became desperate enough to reach out to Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II for aid. While that'd make an awesome novel, the help wasn't to come. Charles's warpath arrived in Rome on the last day of 1494 and absolutely ransacked the place. Yet, somehow, in the face of these insurmountable odds, Rodrigo managed to sit Charles down at the negotiation table and persuade him to politely fuck off back to France empty handed, a conclusion which sank like a rock in the stomachs of all the cardinals who were fully expecting Rodrigo to be deposed and replaced with Giuliano. The Orsini family in particular paid heavily in blood for their betrayal of the Borgias, and meanwhile the castles at Benevento, Terracina, and Pontecorvo were forced to concede to the control of Rodrigo's beloved son Juan, the Duke of Gandía. Juan, however, was found floating in the Tiber River with his throat slit in June 1497, probably not by the hand of one of those disenfranchised cardinals, but possibly by Juan's own brother Cesare. Hoo boy, that's a can of worms. I'm saving that shit for another day.
Following Juan's death, Rodrigo is said to have been overcome with grief and declared that from this point on he'd strive to put an end to all the church's violence and corruption and bla bla bla, he didn't do any of that. Instead, from 1498 to 1501, he sent the freshly de-cardinaled Cesare up and down the Italian Peninsula with Louis XII, the new Pope-friendly King of France, conquering whoever got in the way of this overpowered alliance. If we're to believe one passage from Rodrigo's chronicler, Johann Burchard, one of the most salacious episodes of Rodrigo's career took place on October 31, 1501. Cesare, home from the campaign, had orchestrated a banquet for his father and sister… a banquet which 50 naked courtesans were invited to. Allegedly, chestnuts were scattered on the floor, and the three Borgia’s got their rocks off as the lovely ladies crawled around on their hands and knees picking them off the floor. This aptly titled Banquet of Chestnuts was quickly transformed into yet another orgy wherein exquisite prizes were handed out to whoever could… well… bust the most chestnuts. Now, it should be noted that Burchard is the only source we have for this event, and historians can argue until the cows come home about just how reliably we should treat this account. Me personally, while I can't comfortably say it happened without a shadow of a doubt as an academic, there is a certain level of “I mean… come on” involved here, isn't there? This was hardly the first or the last time the Catholic Church would be caught with its hands in the cookie jar, or you know… other body parts where they really shouldn't be. I don't believe it's as much of a stretch as some folks would like it to be, but honestly as long as everyone in the room was a consenting adult it's really none of my business what the Pope gets up to in the privacy of his own chambers.
Destroying his enemies was definitely the primary thing on his mind during his final years instead. War once again broke out between France and Naples in 1502, and Rodrigo was in the process of drawing lines in the sand when he met his end in August 1503. On the 6th, the Pope and Cesare were dining at the villa of Adriano de Cornetto, one of the richest cardinals in the Sacred College. On the 12th, all three men came down with a horrendous fever. According to one version of the story, inspired by the puffy face of the Pope's corpse, this was actually the result of a poisoning gone horribly wrong. For whatever reason, the Borgias had intended to lace the cardinal's drink with cantarella, but some mix up got their own cups tainted too. It's a good story, but there was also a malaria outbreak in Rome at the time which could explain everyone's symptoms just as easily. That's not as fun though. Whatever the case, the younger Cesare and Adriano survived their illness, but Rodrigo did not. Medieval medicine certainly didn't help a 72-year-old man recover from whatever fatal concoction was in his system. On the 18th, the Pope heard his last mass, fell asleep, and never woke up again. Apparently as soon as the old bastard was dead, Cesare and his buddy Micheletto drew knives on the attending cardinals and forced them to help rob the joint of anything that wasn't nailed down. That dirty loot did nothing to save Cesare from his own pathetic downfall in Viana, and what remained of the once most powerful family in all of Italy was swept under the rug by Giuliano, known after the brief reign of Pius III as Pope Julius II. Requiescat in pace, bastardo.
Design notes, the main meat of this piece was derived from a 1568 Portrait by Vicente Juan Masip as part of a series of bishops he did for the Valencia Cathedral (note that he also did a portrait of Callixtus III, which I often saw get mislabeled as Alexander VI despite these portraits literally having the names written on them) and Pinturicchio's 1493 fresco of the Resurrection in the Vatican's Sala dei Misteri, or “Hall of Secrets” because I guess that's just a thing the Vatican has and we have to live with that. I also took reference from a 16th century German portrait which doesn't seem to have an artist attached, at least none that's cited on all these print shops making bank off of this anonymous guy's work. Apparently it's being held at the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, so there's that at least. The proportions make Rodrigo look like you accidentally left your flesh light by the radiator for too long, but I liked the black color scheme they went with. I figured that lent itself well to the whole “evil Pope” vibe. If I really wanted to double down on that, I could've taken a lot more than what I did from an anonymous 15th century engraving done by a very brave Frenchman who depicted Rodrigo as a ghoulish devil proclaiming “ego sum papa” or “I am the Pope”. I'm sure that guy lived to continue expressing his grievances for many long and fruitful years.