Says an incredible new mini-series Lucrecia Borgia Was No villain!
Says an incredible new mini-series
Lucrecia Borgia Was No villain!
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco [The Video Troll]
Published in: The Manila Times, August 09, 1987
IN THE public imagination, the name Lucrecia Borgia has long been synonymous with treachery, murder by poisoning, and political intrigue. The monumental 10-part television series “The Borgias” — produced at great expense by the US Arts & Entertainment Network, and now locally available on rentable video cassettes — does much to rescue this sadly-beleaguered damsel from centuries of disrepute.
The series — itself an industry milestone based on meticulous research — clearly portrays the luckless Lucrecia as a hapless pawn to the mind-boggling machinations of her father Rodrigo (later to become Pope Alexander VI), and her equally notorious brother Cesare.
Interestingly enough, the Borgias were of Spanish origin, and the family had previously opted to Italianize its surname from the original “Borja”. Italy in the 15th Century was the center of the civilized world, and the Borgias had hoped to rule a unified Europe from their seat of power in Rome.
Alexander, whose excesses as “the Vatican’s evil genius” far outweighed those of other Renaissance popes, thought little of having his enemies eradicated in their sleep, and built a massive fortune selling papal favors to neighboring monarchs. His lechery was legendary, and his own daughter Lucrecia was among his more prominent victims, dispatched under the cover of night to deliver their son Giovanni away from prying eyes and in the safety of some remote nunnery.
Cesare Borgia, whom Machiavelli idolized in his book "The Prince”, was even more ruthless than his father the pope, employing skilled assassins on a permanent basis, and murdering his elder brother Juan (Alexander’s favorite) in order to succeed him as Captain-General of the Papal Armies. Neither did his obsessive love for Lucrecia prevent him from using her as political bait whenever he deemed it convenient.
Both Alexander and Cesare connived to marry Lucrecia into three prominent Italian families each time to gain strategic advantage. They had declared her first husband impotent, and had sued for the marriage’s annulment when he was no longer of use to them. And later, with the pope’s implied complicity, Cesare had ordered Lucrecia’s second husband murdered in his Vatican apartment — below the pope's own quarters — when he proved uncooperative.
But Lucrecia’s third marriage produced eight children, eventually outlived both Alexander and Cesare by over 30 years, and provided the golden-tressed beauty with the happiest years of her life.
As a staggered series, “THE BORGIAS” is unbelievably engrossing, and is well-worth ten hours of your time. However, some nudity and scenes of explicit violence may require you to see it after the kids have gone beddy-bye.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Says an incredible new mini-series Lucrecia Borgia Was No villain!” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, August 09, 1987
