Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias (2011-2013) 3.7

The Borgias (2011-2013) dir. Neil Jordan

the borgias is my favorite show and i think it's the best show ever made and all. however, there's just this one aspect that is genuinely hilarious to me and i mostly criticize the show for. the writers suddenly trying to make the viewers massively despise juan by turning against him and disingenuously writing him in his final moments so the watchers won't miss him or sympathize with him by making him a walking danger as an excuse to kill him off and prop up cesare's character. they wanted the audience to root for cesare at juan's expense and make his death seem necessary lol. they truly thought they served with this one, like maybe juan's character was shamefully abandoned by the writers (as well as his family except for rodrigo) but david oakes had many people sold with the way he played him to perfection, improvising and making juan remarkable, tremendous, and humane. the show is obviously a classic masterpiece, but in my opinion about the juan part, simply rushing the writing of a tragic dying character on a show for weak reasons is pure disrespect.

Still can't get over the fact that The Borgias (2011 – 2013) invented gender

“THE BORGIAS AND THE MAFIA

In 1455, the Holy See was occupied by Alfonso de Borja, a descendant of this eighth knight, under the name Callixtus III. Having gained the trust of King Alfonso Il of Naples, he came to power at the age of seventy-seven, while suffering from stomach cancer. His pain made him suspicious. He believed only in the loyalty of his Spanish family. Through the legacy of inheritance, his fortune fell into the hands of Rodrigo Borgia, who used it to fund his own ascension to the papal throne. Thus was born the first Mafia clan in history.

The Borgias possessed an absolute thirst for power. Europe had, by then, lost all hope in the goodness of God: the plague known as the Black Death had made miserably clear just how precarious human life can be, and with the bitterness of an orphan deprived of its supreme father, the populace consoled itself by indulging in carnal pleasures. It was in this context that Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, began trafficking in a very powerful drug: papal bulls, which granted the forgiveness of sins . . . Every citizen could murder, steal, gamble, engage in prostitution or incest or unbridled gluttony, and all without fear: because in exchange for a handful of ducats, the Church offered absolution and the assurance that God would welcome the sinner into heaven.

The Borgias' passion for life, for dominance over all mankind, their disdain of any divine retribution, this absolute lack of morality, offset by their staggering appreciation of fine art, utterly captivated me. Knowing that the respectable Church of today once had a Spanish adventurer at its roots, a clever thief who was surrounded by his bought-and-sold lovers and by his children, each embodying a spiritual summit as well as an abyss - Cesare, strength and tyranny; Lucrezia, beauty and lust; Giovanni, intelligence and vanity; Gioffre, purity and stupidity - reminded me of the lotus plant, whose bright flowers spring from filthy swamps . . . And so I yielded to the temptation to write a comics script: in the form of a vast historical fresco on the creation, growth, and death of this provocative family, so similar to some of the people currently governing our planet.

(…)

In place of the Black Death, we have cancer and AIDS, along with pollution of our air, our water, and our planet. Instead of cities at war, we are witness to entire countries fighting. Christianity and Islam remain in conflict even today. The discovery of the Americas has now become interplanetary exploration. We're experiencing the artistic revolution of the Renaissance through personal computers and the Internet. The papal bulls of yore are today's commercial "benedictions" from the United States. Just as the ducat was the key to paradise during the Renaissance years, our only God is the almighty dollar: whether its value goes up or down and the gates of heaven open or close . . . Just as Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, recommended aggressive invasions to achieve Italian unity, in this day and age a powerful nation (that shall remain nameless) ruthlessly attacks any country, claiming to obstruct "Evil" but spurred on, in fact, by its thirst for oil . . . Today, the Borgias have been replaced by oil mafias, pharmaceutical industry multinationals, drug cartels, and greedy bankers.

And yet, the corruption that flourished during the Renaissance could not prevent the emergence of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Raphael, a Botticelli, a Michelangelo, a Dante, a Machiavelli even, as well as so many others who opened up new vistas to human awareness. This is what brings us great hope: the possibility that the decadence of the world today is just the pain of a chrysalis becoming a butterfly, and that from the last vast crisis into which we plummet a new humanity will arise, one that will look upon us with the same tender compassion we feel for the monkeys.

—Alejandro Jodorowsky

August 2011”

The Roman Trio

{FANCAST} Isolda Dychauk as Sansa Stark and Mark Ryder as Sandor Clegane 💖💖

The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard and rode back to the lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down his broken lance and snatched up a fresh one, jesting with his squire. The Hound spurred forward at a hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This time, when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor Clegane shifted with him. Both lances exploded, and by the time the splinters had settled, a riderless blood bay was trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime Lannister rolled in the dirt, golden and dented. 

Sansa said, “I knew the Hound would win.”

Ned's POV {A Game of Thrones}

I think they are so Green Queen and Realm’s Delight coded 🫶

incestuously adoring aristocratic family of amoral Roman emulators with messianic delusions of grandeur and a vicious will to power--or, how the House of Halbrandia made their own damn empire

hannah prompted me on twitter. my borgias simping soul wrote the set-up for the years 1445-1492, starring:

la Princesa Dorada, Galadriel, the bastard sister of King Finrod Ferndinand of Spain. 

Or as she’s known in Rome, the Mary Magdalene to Cardinal Mairon, the Dark upstart as he schemes his way to the throne of St. Peter's.

Or: how Galadriel and Sauron are not Alexander and Vannozza in personality, and they're too fucking smart for the banalities of evil that undermined the loyalty and rule of all other princes of the time, and too fucking hedonistic and roman to ever not be cruel, cruel, cruel in slicing his way to the top. 

La Bella Farnese. ✨

I realized I never posted my Giulia Farnese cosplay here on Tumblr.

The Borgias Season 1: Episode 4 - Lucrezia's Wedding.

the borgias (2011-2013)

Letter of condolence from Girolamo Savonarola to Rodrigo Borgia AKA Pope Alexander VI upon the death of Juan Borgia

Okay but can we all collectively agree that Peter Sullvian's Ascanio Sforza in The Borgias always seems to be only one step away from glancing at the camera like he's in The Office?

My husband observing me like my insurance pays him while I melt into pieces during a show focused on:

- two italian renaissance s!blings trying to not f!ck eachother and failing

- a cannibal therapist gaslighting and manipulating his sweaty fbi agent client into killing and falling in love with him

- a cannibal boy meeting a cannibal teenage girl and being cannibals together

- a cannibal criminal with super hero abilities and multiple personalities that kidnaps and connects with an abused teenage girl

- a 107 yr old vampire thirsting for a teenage girl and gaslighting her until she loves him more than life itself

- a nation being abused and making their kids kill other kids

- a highly intelligent, paranoid detective chasing criminals and being slightly obsessed with his roommate

- romans killing, f!cking, and manipulating each other

- a serial killer turned actor being bad at being an actor

-law and order SVU I really don’t know how to explain that as my comfort show

{Fancast} Isolda Dychauk as Sansa Stark

The gods are just, thought Sansa. Robb had died at a wedding feast as well. It was Robb she wept for. Him and Margaery. Poor Margaery, twice wed and twice widowed. Sansa slid her arm from a sleeve, pushed down the gown, and wriggled out of it. She balled it up and shoved it into the bole of an oak, shook out the clothing she had hidden there. Dress warmly, Ser Dontos had told her, and dress dark. She had no blacks, so she chose a dress of thick brown wool. The bodice was decorated with freshwater pearls, though. The cloak will cover them. The cloak was a deep green, with a large hood. She slipped the dress over her head, and donned the cloak, though she left the hood down for the moment. There were shoes as well, simple and sturdy, with flat heels and square toes. The gods heard my prayer, she thought. She felt so numb and dreamy. My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel.

-

Sansa Stark Flees King's Landing {A Storm of Swords}