Princesses Behaving Badly

by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

  But the real Lucrezia Borgia wasn’t a murderess, and she probably was never intimate with her brother. In fact, despite a rocky young adulthood that saw her married three times before the age of 22, she eventually blossomed into a woman you might actually like to have tea with. Just maybe pour your own cup.

  MEET THE BORGIAS

  By the time of Lucrezia’s birth, in 1480, the Borgia family was one of the most powerful clans in Renaissance Italy and Spain. It was certainly one of the most corrupt: Borgias murdered, married, lied, and cheated their way into power, and once they had it, they went to great lengths to keep it. They were, effectively, a Renaissance mafia family, but with even fewer laws to curtail their crimes.

  Lucrezia’s father, Rodrigo, was a nephew of the late Pope Calixtus III. Though clearly not suited for the celibate life, at age 25 he was made a cardinal, a position that came with a lot of power and a massive income. At the time, the Roman Catholic church was the political, as well as the spiritual, center of Western Europe; it governed the Papal States, a region that encompassed a wide swath in the center of what is now Italy. The church and its head, the pope, wielded major influence over other Italian city-states, including the kingdom of Naples to the south and powerful Florence to the north, as well as the Catholic monarchies of Spain and France. It was also as corrupt as any ruling institution can be, which explains how Rodrigo could be considered a legitimate ecclesiastic leader while hosting wild parties replete with young ladies, wine, dancing, and lots of unpriestly sex. He reportedly fathered as many as nine children, at least four (including Lucrezia and Cesare) with his longtime mistress, the married noblewoman Vannozza Cattanei. But if the Borgia children were illegitimate, they were never made to feel that way. Beautiful Lucrezia was treated every bit like the princess she would later become.

  When Lucrezia was 12, Cardinal Rodrigo was elected pope, taking the name Alexander VI, a triumph that cemented the Borgias’ fortunes and made her father the most powerful man in Europe. It also meant that pretty Lucrezia, who according to contemporaries had long blonde hair, hazel eyes that could appear gray or tawny, and an “admirably proportioned” bust, was the Borgias’ new most-valuable asset.

  Pope Alexander was exceptionally adept at marrying off Lucrezia for maximum gain—each of her three marriages was to a more politically important family. The first, when Lucrezia was just 13, made her the wife of Count Giovanni Sforza, member of a rival clan and ruler of Pesaro, a city-state on the Adriatic coast. But Sforza proved a disappointment: though terrified of his new relations, he was equally afraid of his own family. Lucrezia’s father determined she would be worth more were she married to someone else, and so when she was 17, he moved to have her marriage annulled. He was the pope, after all, but he had to claim that Sforza was impotent and the marriage was never consummated. That Sforza’s first wife had died in childbirth would seem to indicate that he was able to perform his husbandly duties, but overlooking that fact wasn’t nearly as difficult as getting Sforza to agree to sign the divorce papers. The count, as you can imagine, was not enthusiastic about telling the world he was impotent, but ultimately he capitulated to pressure from the Borgia family as well as his own.

  Meanwhile, Lucrezia embarked on an illfated dalliance with independence. While her family wrestled over her divorce, she removed herself to a convent outside Rome. But if you think she couldn’t get up to much trouble there, think again—she soon found herself pregnant after a passionate affair with Pedro Calderon, a Spaniard in service to her father. Within weeks of her family discovering the pregnancy, Calderon was dead—Cesare supposedly stabbed him in the Vatican at the pope’s feet, although a papal scribe says that he “fell not of his own will into the Tiber.” The lady-in-waiting who’d tried to help Lucrezia cover up her growing bump was pushed into the river after him. The fate of the child, whom Lucrezia may have delivered in March 1498, is unknown.

  BACK TO THE ALTAR

  Such conditions would have made any other woman unmarriable, and gossips were calling Lucrezia the “greatest whore there ever was in Rome.” Yet suitors clamored for her hand, and by August 1498 she was again at the altar. Her second marriage, to 17-year-old Alfonso of Aragon, the duke of Bisceglie and illegitimate son of the king of Naples, made Lucrezia a duchess and earned her the title of princess of Salerno. Lucrezia adapted well to her new husband, with whom, by all accounts, she was very much in love. Within six months, she was pregnant with their son, who was born on November 1, 1499. But people who became inconvenient to the Borgia family had a tendency to die, and the young duke was becoming very inconvenient, indeed.

  Renaissance politics were as tangled as a bowl of pasta (sorry), but here’s the long story less long: Cesare, who had recently married a French noblewoman, wanted help from France to conquer the city-states of southern Italy. Because France was warring against Naples, Lucrezia’s marriage to a Neapolitan was an obstacle to family business. So one day in 1500, “unknown” assailants attacked Alfonso in St. Peter’s Square, leaving him severely wounded but alive. Lucrezia nursed him back to health, only to have him later strangled by armed attackers. As a contemporary reported, “Since Don Alfonso refused to die of his wounds, he was strangled in his bed.” There was no doubt who’d commissioned the murder—all signs pointed to Cesare. Aware that he was the prime suspect, Cesare claimed his brother-in-law had tried to kill him with a crossbow while he walked in the garden and therefore deserved to die. Exactly no one believed that story, and gossips claimed that Alfonso was murdered not just for hindering the alliance with the French, but also because he’d replaced Cesare in his sister’s affections.

  Lucrezia was devastated by her husband’s death. According to his former tutor, who was present at both attacks, Lucrezia filled the palace with “shrieking, lamenting, and wailing.” Her constant weeping and raging against her father (who, incidentally, had no part in the murder) and her brother proved too much; they sent her and her infant son to Nepi, a small town some 30 miles north of the Vatican, to recover her senses. And though she had loved her husband, Lucrezia loved her brother Cesare even more (how much more is open for debate); she soon forgave him. Next task on the family to-do list: find her another status-boosting husband.

  Lucrezia’s third and final walk down the aisle was with another Alfonso, this time Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara. This match was the trickiest: at first Lucrezia seemed disinclined to remarry, complaining to her father that, to date, all of her husbands had been—ahem—“very unlucky.” What’s more, Ercole d’Este, Alfonso’s father, didn’t trust the Borgias as far as he could throw them, and so he spent years delaying the marriage. Courtiers continually tried to convince him of Lucrezia’s personal modesty, her Christian devotion, and her good sense; Lucrezia, who was nothing if not ambitious, also started a frequent correspondence with Ercole in the hopes of impressing him. In the end, it was probably the sizable Borgia dowry and power, as much as her personal charms, that facilitated the match. Once again, Lucrezia bent herself to her family’s will, leaving her 2-year-old son in Rome to wed the duke.

  With marriage number three, Lucrezia’s reputation was on the upswing. Even a spy in the employ of her new and distrustful sister-in-law declared that “every day she makes a better impression on me; she is a lady with a very good mind, astute, you have to keep your wits about you with her.” And despite her husband’s initial misgivings, he and Lucrezia got on like a house on fire. True, he spent his days prowling the streets for whores and hanging out in taverns, but he spent his nights with her. Lucrezia’s relationships with her new in-laws were improving as well, which was probably a good thing, because the Borgias’ roller coaster fortunes were about to take a nosedive.

  THE REHABILITATION OF LUCREZIA BORGIA

  In 1502, Cesare was the acknowledged military power in Italy, having attacked and taken control of several key city-states. He was a terror. Once, suspecting that one of his most trusted followers was plotting against him, he had the man decapitated, the h
ead mounted on a lance and displayed in the town piazza. Anyone who stood in Cesare’s way was likely to meet a similar fate.

  By 1503, however, Cesare’s fortunes were turning. In particular, his alliance with the French king was becoming a problem. Believing that Cesare was too powerful, Louis VII began blocking his acquisition of additional lands. Then the situation worsened—on August 18 of that year, Pope Alexander VI died. The man who had been the source of the Borgia authority was gone, and Cesare’s mad scramble for power had made him more enemies than he could afford. The new pope supported him but wasn’t around long enough to matter: the elderly man died only 26 days into his reign. The next pope to be elected was one of the Borgias’ most hated rivals, and Cesare found himself a marked man. In 1504 he was arrested by papal forces and shipped off to prison in Spain. After a dramatic escape in 1507, Cesare was killed while fighting in the army of his brother-in-law the king of Navarre.

  Lucrezia remained loyal to her brother until the end. By this time her own position was extremely perilous. Not only had her family’s power and influence died with her father, but so far she had been unable to do the one thing she needed to do: produce an heir. Though pregnant in her first year of marriage, she had given birth to a stillborn daughter at seven months and nearly died from fever. Her husband had an easy out should he want one—everyone knew that the grounds for Lucrezia’s divorce from Sforza were a sham, a claim that, if pressed, could mean that her current union had no legal basis.

  But Lucrezia’s new family didn’t try to ditch her, for the simple reason that they liked her. That’s as strong an indication as any that Lucrezia was not the evil incestuous murderess that contemporary and historical gossip claim she was. True, had her husband divorced her, he would have been obligated to return her exceptionally large dowry. But there is no evidence that any of the duke’s family even raised the thought. On the contrary, her new family protected her, respected her, and even tried to help her wayward brother.

  In some ways, the Borgia downfall proved to be Lucrezia’s salvation—run-of-the-mill intrigue was far less deadly than Borgia-level intrigue. And though she had a few affairs—most notably with poet Pietro Bembo and her brother-in-law Francesco Gonzaga—for the most part she led a quiet life. She re-created herself as the quintessential Renaissance lady: a patron of the arts, charitable, pious, reserved, and nearly constantly pregnant. She eventually bore four sons and a daughter who survived infancy, though she was also plagued by multiple miscarriages and difficult births. Lucrezia’s final pregnancy, at the age of almost 39, resulted in her death. She succumbed to postchildbirth puerperal fever five days after delivering another daughter, who also did not survive.

  THE WICKEDEST WITCH OF THEM ALL?

  By the end of her life, Lucrezia had become excessively penitential, whether for sins real or imagined, only she knows. How complicit she was in her family’s crimes is unclear, but she certainly benefitted from them. The constant intrigues and murderous tendencies brought her power, wealth, and excellent marriages she couldn’t possibly have made otherwise. But her brother murdered one of her lovers and one of her husbands and one of their own brothers, and her family’s actions separated her from her firstborn son. Though her flirtations with independence didn’t always go well, they did reveal a woman trying to break free from those who used her for their own ends.

  Few women in history have been as demonized, even fetishized, as Lucrezia Borgia. Historians and novelists preferred to believe that her sins were real, and over the centuries many have added several she couldn’t possibly have been guilty of. In 1833, for example, the French writer Victor Hugo wrote a stage play based on Lucrezia’s life, depicting her as a lusty, amoral murderess who accidentally poisons her illegitimate son; the play later became Gaetano Donizetti’s opera. In Hugo’s preface, he makes his opinions unequivocally clear: “Take the most hideous, the most repulsive, the most complete moral deformity; place it where it fits best—in the heart of a woman whose physical beauty and royal grandeur will make the crime stand out all the more strikingly; then add to all that moral deformity the purest feeling a woman can have, that of a mother.… Inside our monster put a mother and the monster will interest us and make us weep. And this creature that filled us with fear will inspire pity; that deformed soul will be almost beautiful in our eyes.”

  It’s this sexy, incestuous, philandering, murderous princess that people want to believe in, the one who makes the most scandalous story. But Lucrezia Borgia wasn’t the slutty poisoner everyone wanted her to be. She was a woman who managed to survive not only the pit of vipers that was Renaissance Italy, but the pit of vipers that was her own family. And isn’t that story more interesting?

  Malinche

  THE PRINCESS WHO SERVED HER COUNTRY’S CONQUERERS

  CA. 1502–1529

  AZTEC MEXICO AND SPANISH MEXICO

  Once upon a time, there was an Aztec princess. Her father was the cacique of a city-state near the Gulf of Mexico, but he died when the princess was very young. Her wicked mother soon remarried and gave birth to a little boy.

  The little princess’s mother and stepfather wanted their son to become the next chief, and the little princess was in the way. They couldn’t let her marry because then her husband would have a claim to the throne. So the scheming parents hit upon an ingenious solution: they sold the girl to a group of Mayan slave traders and told everyone she’d died. The Mayans in turn sold her to traders from the city of Tabasco, where the princess came of age and was rescued by the brave knights of the Spanish Empire. She proved her worth by acting as their translator and guide, so fully embracing their religion that when once again confronted with her mother, she forgave the perfidious woman on the spot.

  That’s the fairy-tale version that later Spanish biographers would relate of the beautiful, noble, admirable princess known as Malinche. But that’s not the story modern Mexicans tell. To them, La Malinche is one of the most reviled, controversial women in postcolonial history.

  The real story, of course, is a lot more complicated.

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  We don’t know the circumstances of the young woman’s birth or even her real name—Malinche was the Spanish garbling of Malintzin, the name she was called by the slavers who sold her. Though she probably was the daughter of a nobleman, the whole “princess” thing was added later by the Spanish who wanted to valorize her story. But it is true that at about 8 or 9 years old, little Malinche found herself sold into slavery. The institution was a deeply entrenched part of Mesoamerican culture at the time, and it was not uncommon for families to sell their children as slaves, who were typically used for manual labor or sex.

  In 1519 the Spaniards arrived in Tabasco, and teenage Malinche’s whole world changed. Led by the conquistador Hernan Cortés, the Spanish had come calling a few times before, and their interactions with the local Chontal people had not exactly been friendly. This time around, the Chontal tried to put up a fight, but the invaders had armor, guns, and horses. The Chontal lost 220 men in a matter of hours; surrender was the only option. Malinche, along with 19 other women as well as large quantities of gold and food, was offered up as tribute. She was baptized Marina—it was standard practice among the conquistadors to convert women and slaves to Christianity before having sex with them—and then passed off to one of Cortés’s men.

  This “most excellent woman,” according to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a foot soldier in Cortés’s army writing in 1568, was “good-looking, intelligent, and self-assured.” More important, she had a gift for languages that quickly made her indispensable. Malinche’s native tongue was Nahuatl, but as a slave in Tabasco she’d learned two Mayan dialects and soon she set to learning Castilian Spanish from a friar in Cortés’s company. Her facility was said to be so great that she was fluent in only four months. When Cortés realized her value, he made sure that she never left his side. She served so often as his mouthpiece, and the two were so closely identified with each other, that he w
as sometimes called “El Malinche” (kind of like Mr. Malinche) by the Mesoamericans.

  But Malinche wasn’t valuable only as a translator. She was familiar with native royal customs, owing to what Spanish biographers claimed was her childhood lived in a nobleman’s home, and as a slave she’d spent time with several tribes. She understood how the indigenous peoples thought, what they believed, and how they worked. She could be exactly what Cortés needed: a guide in this strange new land.

  It didn’t take long for Malinche to prove her worth. She told Cortés that the Aztecs thought he might be the reincarnation of their god ruler Quetzalcóatl. She also explained that several of the tribes chafing under Aztec rule could easily be persuaded to help him take down their empire. Cortés depended on her to communicate with those who wished to join him and, after the Spanish defeated a tribe, to explain to the people that they’d in fact been conquered. Malinche even acted as a sort of spy. Once, playing the disloyal servant, she heard from a local woman about a plot to ambush the Spaniards as they were leaving the village of Cholula. She told Cortés, who then ordered the massacre of Cholulan leaders and warriors.

  With Malinche’s help, the Spaniards made their way to Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma’s massive and glorious city. In late 1519, it was Malinche who translated the Aztec leader’s first words with the foreign newcomers. Whatever Moctezuma actually said, and whatever Malinche may have translated, Cortés claimed to his king that the Aztec ruler had immediately agreed to cede his entire empire to Spain. That gave Cortés the pretext to subdue the Aztecs with force (technically, the Spanish king could not force a foreign people to serve him, but he could punish rebels who defied his rightful rule). In spring 1520, after several months of peaceful but tense coexistence, fighting broke out. Cortés blamed the Aztecs, claiming a plot was afoot to revolt against the Spaniards; on that pretext and a trumped-up treason charge, he arrested Moctezuma. What happened next depends on whose version you believe. Native records claim that it was the Spanish who struck first, slaughtering the Aztecs in one of the temples during a religious festival. Cortés’s soldiers later said that the festival was just a cover for the warrior class and nobles to prepare to mount an attack on the Spaniards.