January Meme: Family Dynamics in The Borgias
The Borgias: love the first two seasons, do not love the third with the exception of a few episodes, to the point where I was relieved when it was cancelled, not least because I could see where this was (likely) going even before Neil Jordan described the ending he had had in mind. That my emotional investment was with the family dynamic (as in the entire family, not just Cesare and Lucrezia - in fact, my favourite character was probably Rodrigo, followed closely by Vannozza) had a big deal to do with this.
I will keep the s3 irritation to a minimum, though, when talking about the family dynamics on the show. The occasional comparison the historical originals will happen, though. But let’s talk about the Borgia family as presented on this show.
Compared to history, it’s short of a few members and grows even shorter when after season 1 the youngest son, Joffre, and his wife Sancia mysteriously dissappear and aren’t mentioned by anyone ever again. But let’s pretend they were still around, only not on camera, for the purpose of this entry. When we meet them in the pilot, there is a lot of mutual affection on display, as epitomized by the two garden scenes - Lucrezia has a special bond with Cesare but is adored by her other siblings and her parents as well, Vannozza and Rodrigo clearly have had a long term relationship and have a married couple vibe (which they keep through the subsequent breakup and reconciliation stages in the show), Cesare is cast as the dutiful son and right hand of his father while Juan clearly has issues (he’s the one who draws when Romans taunt him and Cesare about being marranos, i.e. Spanish Jews who only pretend to have converted) and is presented as the archetypical spoilt prodigal; they both come across as Joffre, the youngest, though. Rodrigo is the patriarch who gets his life time goal of becoming Pope in said pilot, meaning his family now is near what is in theory the highest power in Christendom. (In practice, several princes beg to differ, as do various other powerful families, which forms part of the plots for the next seasons.) If you take the three season as broadcast even without Jordan’s intended ending, you could say they show how this power destroys much of the Borgia family from within. (And would have destroyed them entirely had there been another season.) And yet, the shifting family dynamics - and they change from this point onwards - aren’t all solely to the negative.
The one for whom it goes downhill from there, worldly promotions not withstanding, is Juan. Season 1 Juan has a few sympathetic moments showcasing him caring about someone other than himself (when he tells Sancia to be nice to his little brother in their marriage after they had sex; also, he’s honestly relieved to see Lucrezia in the s1 finale, and not just because she proceeds to help him), and while he gets the eyeroll treatment a lot from Cesare (with good cause), their relationship isn’t yet as toxic as it’s by the second season and within the bounds of normal sibling rivalry, and Juan occasionally asks big brother for help (and gets it) . What is already apparent is that while he simultaneously sees himself as his father’s favourite but has a massive insecurity about his standing with Rodrigo, evidenced by the way he reacts to the temporary presence of his mother’s husband, and the rumor that he, Juan, isn’t Rodrigo’s but said husband’s son. No one but Juan brings up said rumor or seems to be bothered by it, but that he brings it up, and keeps demanding proof that Rodrigo really loves him best, brings me to my theory about this which is a bit inspired by Susan Howatch’s novel Absolute Truths. Because while Rodrigo does indulge Juan, in a way he doesn’t Cesare, he doesn’t take him as seriously as Cesare, either. Both Juan and Cesare see the fact Juan gets the martial career while Rodrigo insists on Cesare staying in the church as a preference for Juan, but really, what Rodrigo is doing by making Cesare a bishop, then a Cardinal, is preparing him to follow his own, Rodrigo’s, footsteps, so Cesare could be Pope one day. (He never seems to give up that dream, despite eventually releasing Cesare from the clergy, because in the s3 finale, he presents the new idea of making the papal office inheritable by Cesare the layman to him.) My own headcanon is that Rodrigo probably thinks Juan isn’t his biological son but doesn’t care, because all of Vannozza’s children are his children; it is, however, one of the reasons for the overindulgence, meant to reassure Juan that there is no difference, and resulting in the exact opposite.
(The other reason for the overindulgence for Juan but not Cesare, and that’s not headcanon but main text said in two episodes, is that Rodrigo sees himself in Cesare, but not in Juan, and Rodrigo, while having an ego of his own, also accumulates doubt and self loathing as the series progresses. More about this later.)
Juan proceeds to wreck his relationships with the rest of his family (minus the suddenly disappeared Joffre) in season 2. It’s interesting that this is also the season where on a Doylist level the show gives him several of historical Cesare’s less than glorious attributes (the syphilis, the death of Paolo, which if we take the Peretto story as the origin of Paolo’s character has Cesare, not Juan, as his killer, the initial mishandling of battling Caterina Sforza), and when Cesare finally kills him (with the show giving him the very ahistorical last straw of a reason via the syphilis-maddened Juan threatening Lucrezia’s child; The Borgias does mostly play it safe with their Cesare Borgia, trying their level best to ensure the audience sides with him), this manages to be the inevitable ending for Juan’s character as presented and Cesare’s liberation, since it’s the one thing Rodrigo really can’t overlook anymore and which makes him release Cesare from the clergy.
Of course, Cesare isn’t the first Borgia member who tries to kill Juan in season 2. Lucrezia grows up in season 1 (there is a big difference between the girl who may have a suspicion but really doesn’t want to know about her friend Djem’s death early in the season to the woman negotiating with the French King in the season finale), but s2 is when she becomes dangerous. Trying to kill Juan mid s2 after the death of Paolo manages to get only his mistress killed. (And there’s no sign Lucrezia is sorry about that.) In s1, the girl Lucrezia protested tearfully but eventually gave in when her father didn’t allow her mother at her wedding. (It was Cesare who acted on that occasion.) In s2, Lucrezia gets Rodrigo to give in and do her will instead of doing the more convenient to him thing not once but twice, once after Paolo’s death when she basically puts herself and her child on hunger strike and thus blackmails Rodrigo with the prospect of his grandson dying (and dying unbaptized), and the second time when she gets to choose the marriage candidate agreeable to her. (S2 is the season for Rodrigo to be blackmailed by his kids threatening to kill themselves. Juan does it, too, when Rodrigo tries to take his offices away after Juan starts to go bonkers.) S2 is also where the show uses the historic anecdote of Rodrigo putting Lucrezia temporarily in charge of the church, which brings me to the irony that it’s actually NOT Cesare but Lucrezia, the child most estranged from him by the time s3 ends (seriously, compare Lucrezia’s sharp, cold conversation with her father in the s3 finale with the girl in the pilot who adoringly kneels at his side when he visits), who is the most like Rodrigo.
Cesare, if you get down to it, resembles his father only in as much as they’re both clever, like sex, and are ambitious and hungry for power. But Cesare has a pretty clear idea of who he is and what he wants (and it’s not anything related to the Church). He’s not interested in whether or not he’s dammed, or doing God’s will or going against it. He cares what Lucrezia thinks of him, he cares for his parents (and what they think), in s1 he cares for little Joffre, he comes to care to a degree for Micheletto… and that’s pretty much it. (Ursula is a temporary obsession, but he doesn’t really see her as a person.) Conquering the Romagna is a real goal. Wondering about the presence of God is not.
Otoh, Rodrigo is corrupt, and guilty of every sin a corrupt cleric can be, but he is a genuine believer. When he becomes Pope, it’s a spiritual experience for him. The one insult that Giuliano della Rovere deals out which really gets to him is the accusation that Rodrigo may be a competent administrator (as he proved as Vice Chancellor to several Popes), but that he’s spiritually empty. Cesare is completely indifferent to Savonarola’s accusations (and the fact the man has visions is likewise of no interest), but Rodrigo is bothered by both, so much so that he steps close enough to the condemmed Savonarola to be spat at with the man’s blood. And Rodrigo’s near death experience at the end of s2 and during the first episode of s3 is so shattering to him because he always thought God would be there if he was dying, and he has no sense of God’s presence whatsoever as life nearly leaves him. This, hard on the heels of the other certainty of his life, his family being a family who loves each other, being smashed by Lucrezia telling him she can’t mourn for Juan, that she hated for Juan for what Juan had done to her (and what Rodrigo hadn’t stopped him doing), and by Cesare telling him he killed Juan, results in Rodrigo spending most of s3 wondering who he is. The one other Borgia who has a similar crisis is Lucrezia, who by the end of s3 wonders whether being a Borgia means being a monster and whether that was truly all that was left of her.
During the first two seasons, Lucrezia’s relationship with Cesare was an invariable source of comfort, strength and unconditional love. By the end of season 3, she still loves Cesare, but she also feels imprisoned by him, as she tells her mother, and is torn between wanting to be with him and wanting to be free of him. (And the rest of her family.) S3, of course, is the season where the Lucrezia/Cesare relationship actually turns incestuous, and in order to spare you a repeat of my rants written at the time, the short version of my problem with this is that the entire s3 storyline for these two felt like really bad fanfiction, complete with bashing of the canon love interest and ooc characterisation so said canon love interest doesn’t come between the OTP. (Historical Alfonso d’Aragon was of Lucrezia Borgia’s three husbands the one she actually was in love with, passionately so. He wasn’t spineless, he certainly didn’t hesitate to have sex with her, and Cesare killing him because the Aragon connection had become a political negative instead of a positive, now that the Borgias were allied with France, caused the biggest rift that ever came between the siblings.) I’m still standing by my theory that Neil Jordan hadn’t really wanted to write the relationship as sexual (that’s what he said at the start of the show), but that the fans had been clamoring for it to be and the network thought this was the big draw so by s3, he caved, moodily said “there, here’s your incest” and presto, lots of sloppily written scenes fearing Cesare and Lucrezia as star crossed lovers. Bah.
The one family member whose relationships with just about everyone (other than Juan) get better instead of worst through three seasons is Vannozza. Cesare and Lucrezia love her throughout, but in s1 she needs Cesare to champion her in order to get to the wedding, and has to deal with losing Rodrigo not really to the papacy but to a younger woman. In s2 and s3, Lucrezia (and more rarely Cesare) ask her for advice, clearly regarding her as the wisest member of the family. And Rodrigo goes from being an idiot re: how an ex should behave to treating her as a friend to returning to her and declaring her the only person he wants near him in his darkest hour. Oh, and consulting her for advice. For that matter, even Rodrigo’s young mistress Guilia Farnese, another clever woman, never treats Vannozza with less than respect and also asks her for advice. (Vannozza: de facto consigliere of the Borgia family, y/y?) (BTW, I appreciate she didn’t just fall into his arms again the first time he indicates he’s interested again, which is late s2. After the way he dumped, he really deserved having to work for it.) She’s definitely their north star, to use a favourite Renaissance poetical metaphor, the steadfast, unchanging one around which the family revolves. It’s for Vannozza’s sake, too, I’m really glad the show ended when it did, and she was spared an (ahistorical) ending where Lucrezia poisons Rodrigo and Cesare both in order to be free from them.
Rodrigo and Cesare end s3 reconciled (in my favourite s3 episode, co-starring a Jewish councilor), with Cesare having come into his own as a general and on the brink of being his own legend. As much as I felt let down by the bad fic quality of the Cesare/Lucrezia scenes that season, Cesare/everyone else was fine, whether it was Caterina Sforza, Micheletto or Rodrigo, the later not least because unlike your standard tv father/son relationship, the tenseness between them wasn’t just about Rodrigo needing to say “well done, son”, and the resolution involved, in addition to mutual soul baring, a mutual acknowledgment of each other as the people they are beyond the father/son roles; basically, they’ve become partners (in governing and crime) instead. Again, quite different from the clear cut roles they play in the pilot.
In conclusion: one messed up, fascinating family. I miss the show at its best while not wishing it to be still around.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1137881.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
I will keep the s3 irritation to a minimum, though, when talking about the family dynamics on the show. The occasional comparison the historical originals will happen, though. But let’s talk about the Borgia family as presented on this show.
Compared to history, it’s short of a few members and grows even shorter when after season 1 the youngest son, Joffre, and his wife Sancia mysteriously dissappear and aren’t mentioned by anyone ever again. But let’s pretend they were still around, only not on camera, for the purpose of this entry. When we meet them in the pilot, there is a lot of mutual affection on display, as epitomized by the two garden scenes - Lucrezia has a special bond with Cesare but is adored by her other siblings and her parents as well, Vannozza and Rodrigo clearly have had a long term relationship and have a married couple vibe (which they keep through the subsequent breakup and reconciliation stages in the show), Cesare is cast as the dutiful son and right hand of his father while Juan clearly has issues (he’s the one who draws when Romans taunt him and Cesare about being marranos, i.e. Spanish Jews who only pretend to have converted) and is presented as the archetypical spoilt prodigal; they both come across as Joffre, the youngest, though. Rodrigo is the patriarch who gets his life time goal of becoming Pope in said pilot, meaning his family now is near what is in theory the highest power in Christendom. (In practice, several princes beg to differ, as do various other powerful families, which forms part of the plots for the next seasons.) If you take the three season as broadcast even without Jordan’s intended ending, you could say they show how this power destroys much of the Borgia family from within. (And would have destroyed them entirely had there been another season.) And yet, the shifting family dynamics - and they change from this point onwards - aren’t all solely to the negative.
The one for whom it goes downhill from there, worldly promotions not withstanding, is Juan. Season 1 Juan has a few sympathetic moments showcasing him caring about someone other than himself (when he tells Sancia to be nice to his little brother in their marriage after they had sex; also, he’s honestly relieved to see Lucrezia in the s1 finale, and not just because she proceeds to help him), and while he gets the eyeroll treatment a lot from Cesare (with good cause), their relationship isn’t yet as toxic as it’s by the second season and within the bounds of normal sibling rivalry, and Juan occasionally asks big brother for help (and gets it) . What is already apparent is that while he simultaneously sees himself as his father’s favourite but has a massive insecurity about his standing with Rodrigo, evidenced by the way he reacts to the temporary presence of his mother’s husband, and the rumor that he, Juan, isn’t Rodrigo’s but said husband’s son. No one but Juan brings up said rumor or seems to be bothered by it, but that he brings it up, and keeps demanding proof that Rodrigo really loves him best, brings me to my theory about this which is a bit inspired by Susan Howatch’s novel Absolute Truths. Because while Rodrigo does indulge Juan, in a way he doesn’t Cesare, he doesn’t take him as seriously as Cesare, either. Both Juan and Cesare see the fact Juan gets the martial career while Rodrigo insists on Cesare staying in the church as a preference for Juan, but really, what Rodrigo is doing by making Cesare a bishop, then a Cardinal, is preparing him to follow his own, Rodrigo’s, footsteps, so Cesare could be Pope one day. (He never seems to give up that dream, despite eventually releasing Cesare from the clergy, because in the s3 finale, he presents the new idea of making the papal office inheritable by Cesare the layman to him.) My own headcanon is that Rodrigo probably thinks Juan isn’t his biological son but doesn’t care, because all of Vannozza’s children are his children; it is, however, one of the reasons for the overindulgence, meant to reassure Juan that there is no difference, and resulting in the exact opposite.
(The other reason for the overindulgence for Juan but not Cesare, and that’s not headcanon but main text said in two episodes, is that Rodrigo sees himself in Cesare, but not in Juan, and Rodrigo, while having an ego of his own, also accumulates doubt and self loathing as the series progresses. More about this later.)
Juan proceeds to wreck his relationships with the rest of his family (minus the suddenly disappeared Joffre) in season 2. It’s interesting that this is also the season where on a Doylist level the show gives him several of historical Cesare’s less than glorious attributes (the syphilis, the death of Paolo, which if we take the Peretto story as the origin of Paolo’s character has Cesare, not Juan, as his killer, the initial mishandling of battling Caterina Sforza), and when Cesare finally kills him (with the show giving him the very ahistorical last straw of a reason via the syphilis-maddened Juan threatening Lucrezia’s child; The Borgias does mostly play it safe with their Cesare Borgia, trying their level best to ensure the audience sides with him), this manages to be the inevitable ending for Juan’s character as presented and Cesare’s liberation, since it’s the one thing Rodrigo really can’t overlook anymore and which makes him release Cesare from the clergy.
Of course, Cesare isn’t the first Borgia member who tries to kill Juan in season 2. Lucrezia grows up in season 1 (there is a big difference between the girl who may have a suspicion but really doesn’t want to know about her friend Djem’s death early in the season to the woman negotiating with the French King in the season finale), but s2 is when she becomes dangerous. Trying to kill Juan mid s2 after the death of Paolo manages to get only his mistress killed. (And there’s no sign Lucrezia is sorry about that.) In s1, the girl Lucrezia protested tearfully but eventually gave in when her father didn’t allow her mother at her wedding. (It was Cesare who acted on that occasion.) In s2, Lucrezia gets Rodrigo to give in and do her will instead of doing the more convenient to him thing not once but twice, once after Paolo’s death when she basically puts herself and her child on hunger strike and thus blackmails Rodrigo with the prospect of his grandson dying (and dying unbaptized), and the second time when she gets to choose the marriage candidate agreeable to her. (S2 is the season for Rodrigo to be blackmailed by his kids threatening to kill themselves. Juan does it, too, when Rodrigo tries to take his offices away after Juan starts to go bonkers.) S2 is also where the show uses the historic anecdote of Rodrigo putting Lucrezia temporarily in charge of the church, which brings me to the irony that it’s actually NOT Cesare but Lucrezia, the child most estranged from him by the time s3 ends (seriously, compare Lucrezia’s sharp, cold conversation with her father in the s3 finale with the girl in the pilot who adoringly kneels at his side when he visits), who is the most like Rodrigo.
Cesare, if you get down to it, resembles his father only in as much as they’re both clever, like sex, and are ambitious and hungry for power. But Cesare has a pretty clear idea of who he is and what he wants (and it’s not anything related to the Church). He’s not interested in whether or not he’s dammed, or doing God’s will or going against it. He cares what Lucrezia thinks of him, he cares for his parents (and what they think), in s1 he cares for little Joffre, he comes to care to a degree for Micheletto… and that’s pretty much it. (Ursula is a temporary obsession, but he doesn’t really see her as a person.) Conquering the Romagna is a real goal. Wondering about the presence of God is not.
Otoh, Rodrigo is corrupt, and guilty of every sin a corrupt cleric can be, but he is a genuine believer. When he becomes Pope, it’s a spiritual experience for him. The one insult that Giuliano della Rovere deals out which really gets to him is the accusation that Rodrigo may be a competent administrator (as he proved as Vice Chancellor to several Popes), but that he’s spiritually empty. Cesare is completely indifferent to Savonarola’s accusations (and the fact the man has visions is likewise of no interest), but Rodrigo is bothered by both, so much so that he steps close enough to the condemmed Savonarola to be spat at with the man’s blood. And Rodrigo’s near death experience at the end of s2 and during the first episode of s3 is so shattering to him because he always thought God would be there if he was dying, and he has no sense of God’s presence whatsoever as life nearly leaves him. This, hard on the heels of the other certainty of his life, his family being a family who loves each other, being smashed by Lucrezia telling him she can’t mourn for Juan, that she hated for Juan for what Juan had done to her (and what Rodrigo hadn’t stopped him doing), and by Cesare telling him he killed Juan, results in Rodrigo spending most of s3 wondering who he is. The one other Borgia who has a similar crisis is Lucrezia, who by the end of s3 wonders whether being a Borgia means being a monster and whether that was truly all that was left of her.
During the first two seasons, Lucrezia’s relationship with Cesare was an invariable source of comfort, strength and unconditional love. By the end of season 3, she still loves Cesare, but she also feels imprisoned by him, as she tells her mother, and is torn between wanting to be with him and wanting to be free of him. (And the rest of her family.) S3, of course, is the season where the Lucrezia/Cesare relationship actually turns incestuous, and in order to spare you a repeat of my rants written at the time, the short version of my problem with this is that the entire s3 storyline for these two felt like really bad fanfiction, complete with bashing of the canon love interest and ooc characterisation so said canon love interest doesn’t come between the OTP. (Historical Alfonso d’Aragon was of Lucrezia Borgia’s three husbands the one she actually was in love with, passionately so. He wasn’t spineless, he certainly didn’t hesitate to have sex with her, and Cesare killing him because the Aragon connection had become a political negative instead of a positive, now that the Borgias were allied with France, caused the biggest rift that ever came between the siblings.) I’m still standing by my theory that Neil Jordan hadn’t really wanted to write the relationship as sexual (that’s what he said at the start of the show), but that the fans had been clamoring for it to be and the network thought this was the big draw so by s3, he caved, moodily said “there, here’s your incest” and presto, lots of sloppily written scenes fearing Cesare and Lucrezia as star crossed lovers. Bah.
The one family member whose relationships with just about everyone (other than Juan) get better instead of worst through three seasons is Vannozza. Cesare and Lucrezia love her throughout, but in s1 she needs Cesare to champion her in order to get to the wedding, and has to deal with losing Rodrigo not really to the papacy but to a younger woman. In s2 and s3, Lucrezia (and more rarely Cesare) ask her for advice, clearly regarding her as the wisest member of the family. And Rodrigo goes from being an idiot re: how an ex should behave to treating her as a friend to returning to her and declaring her the only person he wants near him in his darkest hour. Oh, and consulting her for advice. For that matter, even Rodrigo’s young mistress Guilia Farnese, another clever woman, never treats Vannozza with less than respect and also asks her for advice. (Vannozza: de facto consigliere of the Borgia family, y/y?) (BTW, I appreciate she didn’t just fall into his arms again the first time he indicates he’s interested again, which is late s2. After the way he dumped, he really deserved having to work for it.) She’s definitely their north star, to use a favourite Renaissance poetical metaphor, the steadfast, unchanging one around which the family revolves. It’s for Vannozza’s sake, too, I’m really glad the show ended when it did, and she was spared an (ahistorical) ending where Lucrezia poisons Rodrigo and Cesare both in order to be free from them.
Rodrigo and Cesare end s3 reconciled (in my favourite s3 episode, co-starring a Jewish councilor), with Cesare having come into his own as a general and on the brink of being his own legend. As much as I felt let down by the bad fic quality of the Cesare/Lucrezia scenes that season, Cesare/everyone else was fine, whether it was Caterina Sforza, Micheletto or Rodrigo, the later not least because unlike your standard tv father/son relationship, the tenseness between them wasn’t just about Rodrigo needing to say “well done, son”, and the resolution involved, in addition to mutual soul baring, a mutual acknowledgment of each other as the people they are beyond the father/son roles; basically, they’ve become partners (in governing and crime) instead. Again, quite different from the clear cut roles they play in the pilot.
In conclusion: one messed up, fascinating family. I miss the show at its best while not wishing it to be still around.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1137881.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.