![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The joys of old history books
Apr. 26th, 2012 10:27 pmDue to my moderately embarrassing obsession with Showtime's lavishly ridiculous pseudohistorical drama The Borgias, and also because it's free on Kindle, I read Rafael Sabatini's The Life of Cesare Borgia. Rafael Sabatini is better known for writing swashbucklery novels such as Captain Blood--yes, the one that was made into an Errol Flynn movie.
This book was written in 1912, which means it is adorably overwritten, and full of bits in foreign languages that aren't translated and Mr. Sabatini's personal opinions on everything. Mr. Sabatini has ALL THE FEELINGS about the Borgias and the way they have been treated historically, so this book really is not so much a chronicle of the life of Cesare Borgia as it is a massive takedown of everything that had ever been written about any of the Borgias prior to 1912.
One of the things that amused me about this book is that Mr. Sabatini either really wants to be Cesare or, possibly, just really wants Cesare. I was not expecting this because the only supposed portrait of the real Cesare Borgia I have ever seen is this:
Which, seriously, look at that fuckin' Hohenzollern chin. Do not want. But it appears Mr. Sabatini, through a time warp of some sort, has been watching the same Cesare Borgia that I've been watching on Showtime, which is this one:
or, y'know, possibly this one:
Style tip, Mr. Sabatini: It is not necessary to reference "the duke's lithe and comely body" or even call him "the handsome young duke" at every opportunity, particularly when you are talking about, like, military strategy and stuff. And it is really not the standard way of referring to historical persons in nonfiction accounts, no matter how sexy they were (although my job might be more entertaining if it were).
Mr. Sabatini's gigantic mancrush on Cesare aside, the book provided much entertaining information about how generally fucked up the Cinquecento was, and as far as I know, some of it may even have been accurate! Most of the rest of it basically boils down to whining "THEY WEREN'T THAT BAD, YOU GUYS, STOP BEING SO MEAN" but in poncy 1912 diction. He makes Roderigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, sound kind of like President Obama: most of the stuff that sucked about him is actually the exact same stuff that sucked about pretty much everyone with political power at that time, but he had a streak of not being quite as bigoted and hateful and anti-science as a lot of his political opponents, so there was a lot of screaming about how he was a JEWISH MUSLIM PAGAN SATANIST because that totally makes sense. According to Sabatini, Roderigo's main mark against him as Pope was that he was just too effective at using the Papacy to build up a worldly dynasty for his children, which was actually something the last several Popes had been trying to do; they were just all bad at it. He also did ~terrible~ things like refrain from kicking the Jews out of Rome, allow a Muslim prince to hang out in Italy for years, and, in a heretical display of believing in science, send physicians instead of priests to investigate a claim of stigmata.
Lucrezia Borgia is not in this narrative all that much because, according to Sabatini, in real life she was actually wicked boring and didn't do all that much. I think I like fictional dropping-light-fixtures-on-people Lucrezia better. However, Caterina Sforza was genuinely a BAMF, and was known as the "Tigress of Forli" for her military adventures, so she shows up a lot and reading about her is lots of fun.
Overall, not quite as quaintly lolarious as anything by Montague Summers, but much more in English.
This book was written in 1912, which means it is adorably overwritten, and full of bits in foreign languages that aren't translated and Mr. Sabatini's personal opinions on everything. Mr. Sabatini has ALL THE FEELINGS about the Borgias and the way they have been treated historically, so this book really is not so much a chronicle of the life of Cesare Borgia as it is a massive takedown of everything that had ever been written about any of the Borgias prior to 1912.
One of the things that amused me about this book is that Mr. Sabatini either really wants to be Cesare or, possibly, just really wants Cesare. I was not expecting this because the only supposed portrait of the real Cesare Borgia I have ever seen is this:
Which, seriously, look at that fuckin' Hohenzollern chin. Do not want. But it appears Mr. Sabatini, through a time warp of some sort, has been watching the same Cesare Borgia that I've been watching on Showtime, which is this one:
or, y'know, possibly this one:
Style tip, Mr. Sabatini: It is not necessary to reference "the duke's lithe and comely body" or even call him "the handsome young duke" at every opportunity, particularly when you are talking about, like, military strategy and stuff. And it is really not the standard way of referring to historical persons in nonfiction accounts, no matter how sexy they were (although my job might be more entertaining if it were).
Mr. Sabatini's gigantic mancrush on Cesare aside, the book provided much entertaining information about how generally fucked up the Cinquecento was, and as far as I know, some of it may even have been accurate! Most of the rest of it basically boils down to whining "THEY WEREN'T THAT BAD, YOU GUYS, STOP BEING SO MEAN" but in poncy 1912 diction. He makes Roderigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, sound kind of like President Obama: most of the stuff that sucked about him is actually the exact same stuff that sucked about pretty much everyone with political power at that time, but he had a streak of not being quite as bigoted and hateful and anti-science as a lot of his political opponents, so there was a lot of screaming about how he was a JEWISH MUSLIM PAGAN SATANIST because that totally makes sense. According to Sabatini, Roderigo's main mark against him as Pope was that he was just too effective at using the Papacy to build up a worldly dynasty for his children, which was actually something the last several Popes had been trying to do; they were just all bad at it. He also did ~terrible~ things like refrain from kicking the Jews out of Rome, allow a Muslim prince to hang out in Italy for years, and, in a heretical display of believing in science, send physicians instead of priests to investigate a claim of stigmata.
Lucrezia Borgia is not in this narrative all that much because, according to Sabatini, in real life she was actually wicked boring and didn't do all that much. I think I like fictional dropping-light-fixtures-on-people Lucrezia better. However, Caterina Sforza was genuinely a BAMF, and was known as the "Tigress of Forli" for her military adventures, so she shows up a lot and reading about her is lots of fun.
Overall, not quite as quaintly lolarious as anything by Montague Summers, but much more in English.
