cesare • borgia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
caditquaestio) wrote2020-01-19 03:57 am
caditquaestio) wrote2020-01-19 03:57 am
contact • info • crit
Yoooooo! If you have absolutely anything at all to ask, or remark on, or just bring to my attention about how I'm poking at prodding with Cesare, please let me know! Absolutely any input is welcome, aaaaand for everyone's convenience -
anonymous comments: enabled.
ip logging: off!
Thank you!
character: Cesare Borgia
canon & canon point: Cesare ( manga ), chapter 63.
canon information: You can find the basics of the series here - while not completely faithful, it’s keeping within the acceptable limits of marital bliss with historical accuracy.
If that's insufficient, I'll try my best to capture all of the spidery political threads in the following: the manga gives us a Cesare Borgia who’s whiling away his sixteenth year at Pisa: he’s a busy little homicidal bee, having to earn his doctorate in Theology / Canon Law, while trying to sow the seed of future political gain by turning his peers into potential Borgia allies. On the rare occasion when the right stars align and Cesare recalls that the University of Pisa actually wants him to attend class, he does it pretty much only to play at minor politics within the regional organizations run by the heirs of the main powers ruling the Italy of his day (both fellow nationals and foreigners).
In particular, we see him trying to help-intimidate-lure-seduce (…all of these at once?) fellow student Giovanni de Medici into earning cardinalship, so that the Borgia might eventually enjoy another helping hand on the Papal voting conclave. Along his merry way, he invests a little in bribing, smooth talking, or outright recruiting from among the outcasts / weaker links of some of the other university
At the beginning of the manga, the Pisa politics scene features only a handful of way too wine-loving actors that Cesare tries (and often, fails) to coerce into a semblance of action: Raffaele Riario, cardinal, leading faculty member, and relative of Giuliano della Rovere, who is in turn both an enemy to the Medici and Rodrigo’s chief rival for the Papacy; Giovanni de Medici, Lorenzo’s pride and very, very ukeish joy, who is hoping to receive his doctorate and a pass to cardinalship from Riario’s greedy hands; and the Dominican Order, mostly there to troll everyone on Savonarola’s behalf. Rodrigo sort of thrusts Cesare in the middle of this mayhem with a very nebulous instruction manual: live with Riario, favour the Medici, get them back on speaking terms so to spite della Rovere, profit. How Cesare’s meant to do this, Rodrigo’s far too late to his next orgy appointment to say.
Meanwhile, della Rovere turns out to be just the littlest bit miffed with Rodrigo’s meddling and decides to sic Riario and members of the Borgia-loathing Dominican Order on Cesare, before Spanish Lecher Jr. can earn his own cardinal hat and start closely assisting his father. While you sort of know you haven’t made it in Renaissance Italy until someone’s commissioned assassins against you, Cesare takes the expected offence that he isn’t targeted for his own merits, as much as to send his father a memo. After a number of attempts against his best cloaks, his curtains, and his head, he decides to take things personally and to actually go about his father’s business.
Cesare’s scheme for bringing peace, prosperity and a couple of white doves in the Riario-Medici liaison ends up being quite simple: under Medici supervision, a new textile factory will be built on land acquired from Riario, with both thus earning popular acclaim. The entire project will, of course, be sponsored by the Borgia, out of the sheer goodness of their black little hearts. Like many a Mean Girls nerdy side character, Riario is so very happy to be included in something, for a change, that he immediately embraces the Borgia, the Medici, and whatever fleas they may have brought with them. While at it, he also mentions della Rovere’s plans against Cesare, and helps secure another Papal vote for Rodrigo from della Rovere’s own brother.
All seems to be going Just As Planned, until the fine night when a group of ~ mysterious men ~ conveniently dressed up like Dominican monks set fire to the factory construction site. Since this makes waste of quite a few resources and hours of political wheedling, Cesare undertakes an investigation with the tact, restraint and moderation that will so eloquently define him later on life: he wants the culprits culled.
By the canon point from which I’m picking him, Cesare’ll have found, crushed, killed, and destroyed the ones responsible for the factory debacle, secured a solid alliance between Riario and the Medici, and earned himself roughly 2.6(6) concussions, manually delivered to him from Francia, with love. He will also have slowly come to terms with imperial power / tyranny and the revolution necessary to bringing them about being the only real solution to Rome's problems.
personality: Don’t let Cesare’s initial cute and cuddly ways fool you: behind the frivolous smiles, the Disney princess curls, and the 200 lbs of mink fur nobly sacrificed for his cape du jour lie… more smiles, curls and completely gratuitous furs. Behind those, however, is one of the sharpest minds of his era, dutifully & frequently exercised in the name of all that is manipulative wrongdoing. Cesare intelligence isn’t purely academic, as much as it is human - he understands men, how they are likely to act, why, when, and where. His capacity for strategy is fundamentally personal: he never thinks of events in isolation, but always of who might take an interest in the goings on and in their outcome, of how person X’s doing might affect Y’s welfare, how Y in turn might choose to act against Z in direct consequence.
His classical, academic intelligence, while also inspiring, is significantly more determined by the side of the bed on which he wakes up on a particularly gory morning: on the one hand, he’s sufficiently arrogant to only attend classes when he so pleases, and to think a number of his esteemed professors bloody well stupid; on the other, he will always, always take five to fangirl the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, and he has been caught on a number of occasions Oooohing and Aaaaahing over the strategy records of conquerors of old. In spite of the custom that a lord’s opinion should go unquestioned, he allows public challenges in debate – admittedly, more often because he enjoys publicly shaming an adversary by way of rhetoric, than because he genuinely cares about what someone else might have to say.
Like with everything else in his life, Cesare partially attends to his wit because he derives some use from it – he calls on history and oratorical artifice for all and any smooth talking purposes, and he carefully cultivates the illusion that he is all charm, all grace, all gallantry. This and his air of sheer, unyielding confidence is part of what has attracted and tamed the countless cronies at his side. It may or may not be also what choreographed them: the simplest threat against Cesare, and they rise with their swords bared; the wave of the master’s hand, and they take their seat. Even Michelotto, his childhood friend, confidant and closest critic, casually remarks that he’s well and prepared to take down every one of Cesare’s enemies with his own two hands. Befitting his Evil Overlord status, Cesare is sadly not as quick to repay his men’s loyalty with gratitude, often sacrificing their time, their welfare, or their lives, on the premise that since they’ve chosen to dedicate themselves to him, they should lie back, think of
This apparent need to rationalise his “idgaf” reaction about commanding, overseeing, or carrying out murder and mutilation doesn’t stop there. Over time, Cesare becomes increasingly fond of explaining that, you know, it’s all very terribly sad that the people of whose good will or ignorance he’s taken advantage had to suffer – but really, they brought it upon themselves, because they chose to show themselves weak or kind around him of their own will. So, this just in: if Cesare Borgia gets you socially ruined, disfigured, or killed, you had it comin’. You had it coming all along. Hilariously, this attitude underlines the unfortunate reality that man of reason & steel though Cesare Borgia might want himself to be(come), even he is currently unprepared to acknowledge the means to which he has to go in order to achieve his ends.
In terms of his personal relations, Cesare’s so far shown himself capable of two types of friendship: one is forged in, and after a point, by ignorance, with people like Angelo and his sister, Lucrezia, whom he goes to great lengths to protect both from the world and from his own nature; secondly, there’re bonds like the one he’s formed with Michelotto, whom he spares not an ounce of his cruelty and selfishness, but whose enduring loyalty Cesare also repays through a number of extreme and even self-damaging gestures. As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that all the polishing in the world won’t keep this white knight’s armour bloodless, and Cesare starts to emotionally distance himself from those who don’t know, or are unlikely to accept the ‘real’ him.
His interaction with Michelotto is a fairly competent reflection of the selfishness that governs Cesare: he is oddly, viciously loyal to his bee-eff-eff, up to promising him the corpses of the Dominicans who have oppressed or looked down upon him for being a Jew. He fights Henri of Marseille largely for Michelotto’s honour, for all that he later tsuntsuns, claiming the deed was done purely because he’d ~ felt like it. But for all his ‘concern’ for defending or avenging his best friend, Cesare never once takes a decision that might benefit Michelotto and Michelotto only. Tellingly, he deigns to allow his friend the opportunity to leave him and seize a more promising life devoid of religious discrimination in the New World – but this generosity only manifests itself after Michelotto has publicly and irrevocably refused the offer. Likewise, even people like Angelo, who only wish to hero worship at Cesare’s feet, are primarily treated as vehicles of future plans: yes, senpai notices Angelo, but only after the good boyo reveals himself to be close to the Medici, thus having the potential to serve as a spy on Giovanni and on his fellow Florentines. Cesare might have issues with real friendship but never with discovering its benefits.
Beyond his… sociopathic tendencies, Mr. Borgia the Younger is not much unlike what you’d expect of the average, spoiled and very competitive sixteen year-old: he enjoys riding, bad puns, skipping class, drinking, (hopelessly) flirting with mature women, and reminding his elders that he too is a man already – a man!!! On top of that, he’s very, very curious, which sometimes leads to Guinness worthy records for the depth to which he shoves both feet down his mouth, when he asks questions with an indiscretion that verges on cruelty.
It’s this curiosity that in the end has him wandering through the darker, impoverished districts of Pisa and realising how the people really live. Cesare’s humanitarian discovery proves to be the plebe’s gain and the Church’s great loss. Begrudging the clergy for only providing the poor enough relief to keep them reliant on their priestly betters, Cesare starts quietly blaming the Church for pretty much… everything wrong with the world. Although he does not (yet) give up his cardinal prospects, he seems to only currently pursue them because he means to take down the Vatican from within. Interestingly, while he still plots, plans and occasionally disembowels people for his father’s interests, he doesn’t appear to think that Rodrigo Borgia would manage to reform the Church, or bring about significant change. Rather, he casually mentions that for all he’s a bastard son and the heir of tradesmen, he plans to become the protagonist of Italy’s upcoming political wars himself. Take that for competition, token shounen heroes.
It’s because he’s so liberal about his religious beliefs that he can afford to Kanye-shrug about social issues that send his fellow noblemen in fits of shaking, crying, and possibly (single) tears of blood: Cesare doesn’t judge men’s characters based on their birth, rank, or religion, upholding the need for a meritocracy, and straight up deriding those whose bias, or “honour” blinds them from recognizing talent, or opportunity. He is flexible enough to appreciate novelty and variety, particularly in politics and warfare, and he even constructs his strategies around what are essentially Muslim tactics as were employed in the crusades, favouring manoeuvres that rely on speed, coordination, and sleights of hand. Brute force is, in general, not his weapon of choice, as he seems to suffer under the great delusion that the Aristotelian “all things in moderation” is the ideal way to go, and people have to be won through
court alliance: Cesare's loyalty is a rare and mythical beast on the best of supernaturally-inclined days, so it shouldn't surprise that he's equally elusive in terms of pinning down to a Court. He is rational and control to the point of calculated cruelty, he rewards service and respects virtue in others, and he upholds the ultimate goal of world peace with the gumption of a particularly desperate Miss Universe contestant. That said, I'd argue that he belongs in the Unseelie court purely because of his method: this is, after all, the man who created a high market value for ends >>> means, and although young in the manga, he is hardly the wide-eyed, untried hero of an inevitable Nolan Origins story. If anything, he acknowledges and accepts evil, both as a part of himself and of his plans ( after all, if his thoughts are dangerous, why does God let them come to him?), and he simply proceeds as his instincts dictate. At the end of the day, he can't process hypocritically doing something just because it's the done, safe, or easiest thing: he believes in structure, but understands the need for justified chaos – sometimes, you can only scourge with blood and fire - and can't abide 'harmony' that translates as 'unfounded tradition', 'stagnation' or 'decay'; likewise, while he frequently takes on responsibilities and commitments to certain causes and people, it's always because he personally responds to them in some emotional or intellectual way, and not because of an abstract moral principle.
abilities: once again, he’s sort of like a Miss Universe competitor with a horseback riding hobby and a backstabbing talent: he’s got looks, wit, charm and Renaissance science savvy to his name, along with a fairly deft hand with a sword and a bow, and enough dumb luck to suggest he may be manning his own four leaf clover greenhouse. Notably, even though they’re quite well mastered, none of these skills reach a supernatural level; in particular, it should be mentioned that he’s mostly only tried in small, controlled skirmish – he’s not exactly a polished combatant just yet.
He also claims to have raised a horse, but whether that means he did it by his own hand, or gave the necessary orders to a stable master is never elaborated upon – I’d sooner settle with, “he knows his way around horses” as a more realistic compromise.
inventory: just the standard dagger that most heavily paranoid gentlemen of his age carried, along with his Borgia rings.
first person sample:
audio feed;
[ There is nothing quite like the sound of hysterical sobbing to begin everyone’s morning audio program - ]
I… fo – forgive me? Forgive me? Sir? Good morning. Good day to you. Good day to your lady, your children. To your… your lady mother. I would kiss – I would kiss every ring on her fingers, only –
[ A sharp gasp. ]
Please. Please, whatever you want. Whatever you need, I – spare me, take everything, but spare my miserable life and return me to Rome - I am… I am sure my family can provide anything you – have you written them? My family? We are of means! My father can - if only you write him, my father will crawl here upon his knees, and my mother after him, tearing her hair as she weeps, like – like Maria, the Mother. The Virgin! The Virgin, sir! The very Virgin! And my sister, my fair sister, she will sing for your mercy in this little alchemist’s box that captures sound. She would do this. They would all come. All… all of them, only…
[ Pathetic sobbing, now. ]
Please. Please, have mercy and release me from this hell. I beg of you, plea -
[ And suddenly, sheer silence – then, a good deal of laughter. ]
…mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I can’t improvise any longer. Have we all done with the charade, signori? Or shall I play more at Dante, and you at my tormenting spectators?
[ Colder, composed. ]
If you take advice: make haste to speak your minds. Extended silence exhausts your leverage. The terror of anticipation crumbles before boredom.
third person sample:
There is one thing he learns each time he faints: he lacks the makings of a thief.
The first time he wakes from a dreamless sleep, it’s to wetness on his hands, his cheek, his temples, and his lips, to blood and to greenery. He is five, a boy, and not yet heir, but Pedro Luis’ spare, and so, the Lady, his mother has the final say: the horse that threw him is flayed, the stable master broken, and Cesare’s set to name each time the whip metes scars. He keeps the count – loud, clear, maybe sincere – in his best Latin, then loses his words by ‘five,’ cries by ‘eight’ and begs his leave by ‘eleven.’
It is a lesson, his father tells him later, on thieving - he had stolen, for a moment, his mother’s surety that she would have a firstborn son, and not a cripple. It is an ugly thing, theft, and not beloved of God, and so Cesare must mind that he not cheat his mother of the blessed child she so deserves, and he must ride with better care, and he must never lose his seat in the saddle. But it is not stealing from the kitchens, Cesare thinks, when he brings both horse and stable master more servings of their fruit, because he will be a lord one day, and everything in this household will belong to him.
The second time he takes a hurt to his head, he’s a young master of Perugia, and the boys of his school year have sought him for sport. They are all very twelve and very tentative, and they run a crowd in his dormitory quarters, long past curfew: is it as they have heard, then, he is a Spaniard? A Spaniard from Spain? And he speaks Italian as they, and prays with rosaries as they, and he is not a barbarian (as they, remarkably, are not)? He drinks wine and breaks bread and knows to hold his fork? This, they do not believe, he must show them he can hold a fork!
And it’s all fun and games until a boy from Milano loses an eye – to a knife, the fork’s fellow, because Michelotto arrives to find Cesare in a skirmish. Once the violence has done, once they’ve all picked themselves from the ground, once Cesare has regained awareness and he can tell (and remember) whose fist had met his head, order is restored. The administrator is present, the situation is recorded, and under Cesare’s dictation, amends are made in the Borgia fashion: the Milanese boy is (thankfully) a servant, so his master will take gold in apology. They are left, Michelotto and he, with a room in ruin, and ruckus in the halls, and a bloodied knife on their floor. Cesare picks it – “Here. It’s been christened.” – and gives it to his friend, because Michelotto has earned it, and it’s no theft, if it’s been abandoned. Not really.
The third time he loses consciousness, he knows the medical term for it, the cause and the consequence. It is in Pisa, to high fever and a sickness earned off – his followers laugh – a tavern wench. A tavern wench he neither bedded, nor wedded, not even gone and kissed. It is a cold, his father’s physician tells him in terror, as if a minor ailing can rob Rodrigo Borgia of a second son, as if the man might have to say so to his employer. It is an ugly, common sort of cold, befitting Cesare’s late understanding that he has caught it from a commoner during a late night stroll in the plebeian districts.
It is God’s gifts and God’s blessing unto him, and Cesare will spit upon the steps of every church he meets from this day on and until his memory fails him – fails him utterly, and he forgets what he’s seen this month in its whole: the people who starve, the mothers who whore their children, the men who sell their backs and their honours for pittance. The regional priests can help. The regional priests do nothing. The regional priests, Cesare learns, when he sends his guised Spaniards to have the local clergy relieved of their coin purses, carry enough gold to feed a family for months. It is not stealing, he likes to think; it is only hastening God’s plan to give unto the poor the riches of His kingdom.
The fourth time he wakes without remembering himself comes after wine. Much, much wine, and unwatered. That great oaf, Henri, has dealt him an ugly blow during the mock crusades, and his ears still ring of it. He drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks, and the pain pales. His thoughts, if they are his, come muddy: Europeans should ride European horses, Europeans should ride European horses! Henri is right, so very right, that fool is right. Perhaps he should have Giovanni ride Raffaele Riario to Rome, then, and show his good father what a wonderful thing Cesare has done? And will his father laugh? Of course he will, because Europeans should ride Europeans. And die, Cesare thinks, of European steel.
But then, that might not be to his Lord Father’s humour – his moods have come difficult to predict. Cesare, at least, cannot fathom. After all, is he not Rodrigo Borgia’s son? And does Rodrigo Borgia not leave him here, at the pleasure of Giuliano della Rovere’s assassins? Has Rodrigo Borgia not placed the entire weight of Christian Rome on Cesare’s shoulders without much by way of help, much by way of instruction? Of course Cesare will do it. Will do everything. Cesare will manage. Cesare will win the game, because Cesare will rewrite it until every available rule is a sharp blade well-honed by his hand, quick to stab at the heart of his contenders. Take no prisoners, give no quarters.
He does not ask whether he is stealing the lives of those he involves. He has not been a thief so long – there is no need to even consider it.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-07-08 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
I definitely want and can't wait to "show off" his strategy skills! Cesare's poor at the peasantish conceit canonically, and he's already slipping, so it can't be long now...!
I really hope we are playing together / will get to play soon, and thank you again. You're just very lovely.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-07-08 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)i'll leave you to wonder who else adores you >:3 fufufu
but i think it is also a great credit to you that cesare is in great part everything you've written about him, so far. like the app is fantastic, but some players can write really great apps but might fall short to some degree on the execution, but you don't, and I'm just super jazzed for everything he has to offer.
IT IS YOU WHO IS LOVELY and you're very welcome
now if you will excuse me, i have a borgia thread to resume stalking B)
but YES I WOULD LIKE TO THREAD VERY MUCH hopefully it will happen c: