Review: The Vatican Princess

I finally picked up my first novel on the Borgias. I knew once I did this would become another era I would want to read more about... and I was right. I decided to start with CW Gortner's The Vatican Princess, historical fiction about Lucrezia Borgia.

Lucrezia was the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. As I imagine most readers already know, the Borgias have quite the reputation - including Lucrezia. If you're not familiar with the Borgias, let's just say they had a reputation for murdering anyone who got in their way, and rumors of incest were also a contemporary issue for the family.

Lucrezia Borgia

While this is definitely historical fiction, Gortner takes a step back from what he refers to as the Lucrezia of legend and to take a look at what, if any, responsibility she personally bore for her families machinations. He argues in the afterward, which is very worth reading, that she was largely a victim of her family's reputation, and that she was likely a pawn of her families ambitions - like most girls in her era. However, this does not make her uninteresting - far from it.

As Gortner himself points out, so much of the information we have on the Borgias is based on rumor and accounts by their enemies, so it's probably impossible to truly write a historically accurate novel about them. However, it seems like he endeavored to do so, within the confines of the information we have available. He clearly tried not to give in to the temptation to use all the lurid rumors we have about Lucrezia and her family. While he does embrace some of the rumors, he leaves out others, and he makes very clear in his afterward which bits are entirely based on rumor.

Despite this, the book has all the drama you'd expect from a book about the Borgias. I think it's right on the border of being so dramatic as to be unbelievable, but I think he manages to pull it off. It definitely keeps you reading and on the edge of your seat and wanting to read more, especially in the second half of the book.

He also does a great job of reminding us that for much of the time period covered by the book Lucrezia was really quite young. I think he implies, successfully, that even if she was a brilliant manipulator, she was still largely at the mercies of her father's and brothers' ambitions and reminding us to look at her actions - and the rumors about her - through that light.

He definitely peaked my interest on the Borgias and Lucrezia herself. I definitely plan to read more novels about them - I've got a few by Sarah Dunant on my list, as well as The Family by Mario Puzo (yes, the guy that wrote The Godfather). I'd also like to read a biography about Lucrezia to help sort out fact from fiction and to flesh out the information Gortner gives in his afterward - I've got my eye on one by Sarah Bradford.

Overall, while I think The Romanov Empress was better, this novel confirmed my impression that Gortner is an author I want to see more of, and also confirmed that the Borgias are a family I want to read more about. They're a guilty pleasure of the first magnitude - you know that a lot of what you read about them is rumor and probably not true, but damn they are interesting.