THE BORGIAS VS OTTOMAN HISTORY ohboyherewego.jpg
I’ve kind of been holding this in, but I feel strangely compelled to talk about this topic. I don’t mean to rant about it, exactly, as I realize just how much I use my LJ for ranting purposes.
I’ve been watching The Borgias and by every deity that’s out there I will continue to do so, because of several reasons. One: It’s fucking Jeremy Irons cast as who is said to be the craziest pope in history. Two: The guy playing his son Cesare Borgia, among the craziest bastards in history, and his curly hair OHMYGOD. Three: Historical, hysterical crazy drama. Four: Crazy Catholics setting!
And obviously, five: Assassin’s Creed because every time I watch an episode I feel as if Ezio is just watching from a corner.
I don’t want to nitpick on details where, as a historical drama, The Borgias is at points inaccurate. There’s the obvious example of Jeremy Irons, that elegant, sassy tall British twig, being cast as Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), who in reality was quite the fatty but WHO CARES IT’S JEREMY IRONS! I’ve said before that I would sleep with the embodiment of that man’s voice regardless of age should it ever be embodied and I will say it again. Anyway, there are some historical mistakes, and it’s okay because like everything related to art, the show takes its artistic liberties.
And while I don’t really care for it (I’m happy with the thing as it is) I really need to talk about why the depiction of the Ottoman Prince Cem (Djem) in episode three is wrong because it’s wrong on many accounts and there were quite a lot of artistic liberties taken. Consider the following merely enlightening, not ranting, because I don’t really care for him or the Ottomans (having their entire history jammed down your skull in high school tends to do that to you).
· The casting. The actor playing Cem is Elyes Gabel, and while a cutie, there is something about him that sets off my cynicism alert and I’m going to be doing a lot of beating-around-the-bush to get to my point in the following paragraph, but believe me when I tell you that my first reaction upon seeing him was what the fuck?
(Compare the soldiers and the ambassador next to him and the prince for a second.)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the casting guys tried to find the guy that looked the least European and well, they found it. The problem just so happens to be that...
Ottoman people don’t look like that, and least of all Ottoman royalty. Members of Ottoman aristocracy at that time were most often Balkanic, which was a result of the whole “let’s steal pretty wimmins from Europes to put in our harems” thing. The main Ottoman bloodline breeded with non-Muslim slaves from the Balkans, and it became a massive tradition to the point where the guy who actually conquered Constantinople (who just so happened to be Cem’s father, by the way) was more Slav than he was Turkish or Kurdish or Armenian or anything else. The most famous Ottoman ‘queen’ was Polish and lots of Orthodox women were inducted into the Empire as wives. We have jokes about ‘Katarina’’s singing ‘Kalinka’ to steal Ottoman gold and they’re there for a reason. The guy cast as Cem has a very olive complexion that does not represent Ottoman royalty at all, in fact it’s completely alien because the guy looks more like an Indian prince instead of an Ottoman one. And there you have it: I’ve been struggling so hard not to come off as racist (and I really do not want to come off as such) but the guy is Indian! Come on. That’s not an Ottoman prince. That’s the Prince of Persia! (To a stereotype; actually, he couldn’t even be cast as the Prince of Persia, despite a being better choice than Jake Gyllenhaal. You’d have to go even further to the East cast that guy right.)
This is a painting of Cem by Pinturicchio, and while it can’t show much being a Renaissance painting it should be closer to an accurate depiction of Cem than the guy cast as him was. Ottoman princes never looked like that, television, please do stop presenting them as such.
Also bear in mind; the very term ‘Ottoman’ encompasses a much larger number of ethnicities than the term Turkish does today. They were incredibly diverse ethnically, cosmopolitically, and multiculturally. (Notice how I even refer to the Ottomans as they, because despite being our (‘Turkish’) ancestors they were just that different.)
· The age. At 1494, where Cem was 35 years old (which was a year before his death) and in all honesty the guy looks like he’s twenty-five at most. Being presented to be a lot younger than would be historically accurate, he is just the ripe age to be Lucrezia Borgia’s little older-brother-sort-of-crush (oh boy here we go). I actually thought it was cool that they used young!Cem as a plot device to further the sexual tension between Cesare and Lucrezia while taking the artistic liberty to bring his age down a bit, knowing the guy’s real age at that point made me feel a tiny bit more creeped out than I am by the fact that oh god, this series has Cesare calling his fourteen-year old sister Lucrezia “my love” at every chance he gets and rolling on top of her on the grass and being this close to kissing her on the mouth at every other minute they’re together-meeeeeeeeep!
And I am totally hearing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood!Cesare going “Am I hurting you?” while Lucrezia cries every time the Borgias!Cesare and Lucrezia are together like that. So creepy...
· The timeline. Prince Cem didn’t just randomly show up on the Borgias’ doorstep in 1494. He spent the larger part of his adult life in exile because his brother, as shown in the show, didn’t want him around because he was a threat to his rule (his father had actually wanted the younger prince Cem to rule instead of Bayezid II, the older, and seeing Cem was supported Bayezid sent him away blah blah). When Cem died he had been exiled for fourteen years, wandering about aimlessly in what could basically be every country that has a port in the Mediterrenean (okay, I might have exaggerated). He spent no less than five or six years in the Vatican, and he was actually an asset to both Popes (Innocent VIII and Alexander VI), in which a) the Ottomans actually paid the Vatican money to keep the guy there, and b) every time his brother Bayezid over in Constantinople wanted to invade Christian lands the Pope would just go “oh, if you do that, I’ll sic your brother on you” and the Pope tried to convert Cem to Christianity and would probably have put him on the Ottoman throne with some support from his Christians, in an attempt to convert ‘the Turk’ entirely (because they were a nuisance back then, I’d assume). However, Cem refused to convert, which is exactly the opposite of what happens in the show, where he tells Cesare he wants to convert to Christianity if they’re such sweet people. (Which was quite amusing. Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia, such nice men they were. Ahahaha.)
· The wifekilling. Not every man who was displeased with his concubines or wives could kill them, as Cem said it. That right belonged to the Sultan, and he has a point there in that the rule of an Ottoman sultan was most often bloody. They weren’t the most humble among monarchs. An Ottoman sultan was also the Caliph of the Muslim people everywhere, and I can only summarize it quickly in being a Pope and a mini version of the second coming of Jesus at once, in line with the God-King tradition. A lot of people could end up dead if an Ottoman sultan was displeased, most often the viziers and ambassadors and such. What I really find interesting about Ottoman history is that a lot of princes ended up strangled before they even reached adulthood because of the Ottomans’ fabled succession disputes. If a Sultan was dying slash dead, it was Battle Royale in the harem where the princes and their mothers lived. Hürrem (Roxelana), for example, that Polish concubine and then wife to the Sultan, ended up with a lot of prince blood on her hands to make sure her son succeeded the throne. Game of thrones, except there can only be one... tl;dr Life in the Ottoman palace could get violent.
And that's without talking about the Janissaries. Don’t even get me started on the Janissaries. Every once in a while, these soldiers would get pissed off for whatever reason, 'toss cauldrons' as per their "okay we're rioting" warning, invade the royal castle, and set off to brutally murder the entire family of whichever hapless Sultan that happened to be living there.
· Despite being massive assholes the Borgias may not have had anything to do with the death of Cem. There are sources saying that the guy died to complications with his health (fourteen years of being tossed around in Europe like a ping pong ball just because your big brother doesn’t want you around might do that to you; the guy was constantly depressed), while other sources will say that he was actually poisoned (“shaved with a poison-laced razor”, fantastic, isn’t it?). It may have been the Borgias. It may have been Bayezid himself. It may even have been the French, because he was about to be moved there at the time he died. He died in Capua, however, which was under the rule of Napoli, not Rome. “Those asshole Borgias did it” seems to be a common explanation. It may be wise to doubt that still, though, because a lot of bad things were attributed to the Borgias back then (Cesare may not have killed Juan, the incest thing might have been mere propaganda, etc. Though Cesare was still fucking obsessive, man.) You know, typical cardinal butthurt. How dare those white Moors Spaniards take the Papacy, the works.
Also, Bayezid called for a three-day mourning after Cem’s death, unlike in the show where he seems more likely to make it a three-day national holiday in celebration yay he’s dead oh and here’s your 400k ducats, by the way.
I think that’s about it. For the reasons stated above, the depiction of Cem Sultan in the Borgias episode three is not an accurate one, and I am obviously disappointed (would have taken the writers ten minutes to read up on Cem a bit more before turning him into a twenty-year old happy-as-fuck Indian who wants to become a Catholic and is in true Borgia style cantarella’d to death for money). It’s fun to look back on history to read it for yourself, though, because television is what television does... you just have to roll with it. So, there. Just wanted to revise this correctly, and take the asspained crying to a minimum, because man, here, as the neo-Ottomans start rising up, you have no idea how much people cry about this Cem guy.
Now that that's done, let's watch more Borgias. Because it's bene. And I want Juan to fuck off and die already so I can watch curly!Cesare evolve into his baby angels armor. Yes.
there goes this post
I’ve been watching The Borgias and by every deity that’s out there I will continue to do so, because of several reasons. One: It’s fucking Jeremy Irons cast as who is said to be the craziest pope in history. Two: The guy playing his son Cesare Borgia, among the craziest bastards in history, and his curly hair OHMYGOD. Three: Historical, hysterical crazy drama. Four: Crazy Catholics setting!
And obviously, five: Assassin’s Creed because every time I watch an episode I feel as if Ezio is just watching from a corner.
I don’t want to nitpick on details where, as a historical drama, The Borgias is at points inaccurate. There’s the obvious example of Jeremy Irons, that elegant, sassy tall British twig, being cast as Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), who in reality was quite the fatty but WHO CARES IT’S JEREMY IRONS! I’ve said before that I would sleep with the embodiment of that man’s voice regardless of age should it ever be embodied and I will say it again. Anyway, there are some historical mistakes, and it’s okay because like everything related to art, the show takes its artistic liberties.
And while I don’t really care for it (I’m happy with the thing as it is) I really need to talk about why the depiction of the Ottoman Prince Cem (Djem) in episode three is wrong because it’s wrong on many accounts and there were quite a lot of artistic liberties taken. Consider the following merely enlightening, not ranting, because I don’t really care for him or the Ottomans (having their entire history jammed down your skull in high school tends to do that to you).
· The casting. The actor playing Cem is Elyes Gabel, and while a cutie, there is something about him that sets off my cynicism alert and I’m going to be doing a lot of beating-around-the-bush to get to my point in the following paragraph, but believe me when I tell you that my first reaction upon seeing him was what the fuck?
(Compare the soldiers and the ambassador next to him and the prince for a second.)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the casting guys tried to find the guy that looked the least European and well, they found it. The problem just so happens to be that...
Ottoman people don’t look like that, and least of all Ottoman royalty. Members of Ottoman aristocracy at that time were most often Balkanic, which was a result of the whole “let’s steal pretty wimmins from Europes to put in our harems” thing. The main Ottoman bloodline breeded with non-Muslim slaves from the Balkans, and it became a massive tradition to the point where the guy who actually conquered Constantinople (who just so happened to be Cem’s father, by the way) was more Slav than he was Turkish or Kurdish or Armenian or anything else. The most famous Ottoman ‘queen’ was Polish and lots of Orthodox women were inducted into the Empire as wives. We have jokes about ‘Katarina’’s singing ‘Kalinka’ to steal Ottoman gold and they’re there for a reason. The guy cast as Cem has a very olive complexion that does not represent Ottoman royalty at all, in fact it’s completely alien because the guy looks more like an Indian prince instead of an Ottoman one. And there you have it: I’ve been struggling so hard not to come off as racist (and I really do not want to come off as such) but the guy is Indian! Come on. That’s not an Ottoman prince. That’s the Prince of Persia! (To a stereotype; actually, he couldn’t even be cast as the Prince of Persia, despite a being better choice than Jake Gyllenhaal. You’d have to go even further to the East cast that guy right.)
This is a painting of Cem by Pinturicchio, and while it can’t show much being a Renaissance painting it should be closer to an accurate depiction of Cem than the guy cast as him was. Ottoman princes never looked like that, television, please do stop presenting them as such.
Also bear in mind; the very term ‘Ottoman’ encompasses a much larger number of ethnicities than the term Turkish does today. They were incredibly diverse ethnically, cosmopolitically, and multiculturally. (Notice how I even refer to the Ottomans as they, because despite being our (‘Turkish’) ancestors they were just that different.)
· The age. At 1494, where Cem was 35 years old (which was a year before his death) and in all honesty the guy looks like he’s twenty-five at most. Being presented to be a lot younger than would be historically accurate, he is just the ripe age to be Lucrezia Borgia’s little older-brother-sort-of-crush (oh boy here we go). I actually thought it was cool that they used young!Cem as a plot device to further the sexual tension between Cesare and Lucrezia while taking the artistic liberty to bring his age down a bit, knowing the guy’s real age at that point made me feel a tiny bit more creeped out than I am by the fact that oh god, this series has Cesare calling his fourteen-year old sister Lucrezia “my love” at every chance he gets and rolling on top of her on the grass and being this close to kissing her on the mouth at every other minute they’re together-meeeeeeeeep!
And I am totally hearing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood!Cesare going “Am I hurting you?” while Lucrezia cries every time the Borgias!Cesare and Lucrezia are together like that. So creepy...
· The timeline. Prince Cem didn’t just randomly show up on the Borgias’ doorstep in 1494. He spent the larger part of his adult life in exile because his brother, as shown in the show, didn’t want him around because he was a threat to his rule (his father had actually wanted the younger prince Cem to rule instead of Bayezid II, the older, and seeing Cem was supported Bayezid sent him away blah blah). When Cem died he had been exiled for fourteen years, wandering about aimlessly in what could basically be every country that has a port in the Mediterrenean (okay, I might have exaggerated). He spent no less than five or six years in the Vatican, and he was actually an asset to both Popes (Innocent VIII and Alexander VI), in which a) the Ottomans actually paid the Vatican money to keep the guy there, and b) every time his brother Bayezid over in Constantinople wanted to invade Christian lands the Pope would just go “oh, if you do that, I’ll sic your brother on you” and the Pope tried to convert Cem to Christianity and would probably have put him on the Ottoman throne with some support from his Christians, in an attempt to convert ‘the Turk’ entirely (because they were a nuisance back then, I’d assume). However, Cem refused to convert, which is exactly the opposite of what happens in the show, where he tells Cesare he wants to convert to Christianity if they’re such sweet people. (Which was quite amusing. Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia, such nice men they were. Ahahaha.)
· The wifekilling. Not every man who was displeased with his concubines or wives could kill them, as Cem said it. That right belonged to the Sultan, and he has a point there in that the rule of an Ottoman sultan was most often bloody. They weren’t the most humble among monarchs. An Ottoman sultan was also the Caliph of the Muslim people everywhere, and I can only summarize it quickly in being a Pope and a mini version of the second coming of Jesus at once, in line with the God-King tradition. A lot of people could end up dead if an Ottoman sultan was displeased, most often the viziers and ambassadors and such. What I really find interesting about Ottoman history is that a lot of princes ended up strangled before they even reached adulthood because of the Ottomans’ fabled succession disputes. If a Sultan was dying slash dead, it was Battle Royale in the harem where the princes and their mothers lived. Hürrem (Roxelana), for example, that Polish concubine and then wife to the Sultan, ended up with a lot of prince blood on her hands to make sure her son succeeded the throne. Game of thrones, except there can only be one... tl;dr Life in the Ottoman palace could get violent.
And that's without talking about the Janissaries. Don’t even get me started on the Janissaries. Every once in a while, these soldiers would get pissed off for whatever reason, 'toss cauldrons' as per their "okay we're rioting" warning, invade the royal castle, and set off to brutally murder the entire family of whichever hapless Sultan that happened to be living there.
· Despite being massive assholes the Borgias may not have had anything to do with the death of Cem. There are sources saying that the guy died to complications with his health (fourteen years of being tossed around in Europe like a ping pong ball just because your big brother doesn’t want you around might do that to you; the guy was constantly depressed), while other sources will say that he was actually poisoned (“shaved with a poison-laced razor”, fantastic, isn’t it?). It may have been the Borgias. It may have been Bayezid himself. It may even have been the French, because he was about to be moved there at the time he died. He died in Capua, however, which was under the rule of Napoli, not Rome. “Those asshole Borgias did it” seems to be a common explanation. It may be wise to doubt that still, though, because a lot of bad things were attributed to the Borgias back then (Cesare may not have killed Juan, the incest thing might have been mere propaganda, etc. Though Cesare was still fucking obsessive, man.) You know, typical cardinal butthurt. How dare those white Moors Spaniards take the Papacy, the works.
Also, Bayezid called for a three-day mourning after Cem’s death, unlike in the show where he seems more likely to make it a three-day national holiday in celebration yay he’s dead oh and here’s your 400k ducats, by the way.
I think that’s about it. For the reasons stated above, the depiction of Cem Sultan in the Borgias episode three is not an accurate one, and I am obviously disappointed (would have taken the writers ten minutes to read up on Cem a bit more before turning him into a twenty-year old happy-as-fuck Indian who wants to become a Catholic and is in true Borgia style cantarella’d to death for money). It’s fun to look back on history to read it for yourself, though, because television is what television does... you just have to roll with it. So, there. Just wanted to revise this correctly, and take the asspained crying to a minimum, because man, here, as the neo-Ottomans start rising up, you have no idea how much people cry about this Cem guy.
Now that that's done, let's watch more Borgias. Because it's bene. And I want Juan to fuck off and die already so I can watch curly!Cesare evolve into his baby angels armor. Yes.
there goes this post