Borgia Papacy

The Borgia Papacy centred on Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and his family in late fifteenth-century Rome. The period is associated with nepotism, dynastic ambition, diplomacy, warfare and later scandalous reputation. Rome itself was both a religious capital and a political court.

It matters because the Borgias turn Renaissance politics into family drama at the highest level. Their world includes cardinals, ambassadors, soldiers, marriages, rumours and propaganda. Novelists such as Sarah Dunant and many writers of Renaissance historical fiction use the Borgias for stories about power, reputation, gender and survival in a dangerous court.

Renaissance Europe is a strong setting for historical fiction by Dorothy Dunnett, Sarah Dunant, Jean Plaidy, Tracy Chevalier and novels centred on artists, courts, bankers, spies and reformers. The period also connects naturally to Hilary Mantel's Tudor world and to wider European series about Florence, Venice, France, Spain and the papacy. These entries can support books about art, banking, dynastic marriage, religious upheaval, court politics and intellectual change.