The Borgias Celebrated Crimes

In the glittering, bloodstained world of Renaissance Italy, power is won through ceremony, murder, and betrayal. Alexandre Dumas's The Borgias traces the rise and ruin of the dynasty that made corruption into a political art, from Lorenzo de' Medici's deathbed confrontation with Savonarola to the imperial splendor of Alexander VI's papacy and the ruthless ambitions of Caesar Borgia. As Rome celebrates a new pope, hidden treachery festers beneath the pageantry: the Duke of Gandia is lured from a family supper and murdered, his body cast into the Tiber, sending Alexander VI into grief and self-reproach. Caesar, dazzling in procession yet always on the edge of collapse, maneuvers through shifting alliances, papal elections, arrests, and betrayals as Italy fractures around him. Imprisoned for years, he escapes by cunning, only to lose everything again in Navarre, where battlefield bravery cannot save him from abandonment and death. Around these fallen giants, Dumas explores the collision of ambition, conscience, tyranny, and faith, ending with a sharp satire on religious hypocrisy that still affirms the endurance of true belief. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

Né en 1802 à Villers-Cotterêts, et orphelin de son père à quatre ans, Alexandre Dumas doit très tôt gagner sa vie. À vingt ans, il part à Paris et, en autodidacte, il publie très rapidement poèmes et nouvelles. L'immense succès de son drame Henri III et sa cour en 1829 en fait un des chefs de file du mouvement romantique. Ses romans paraissent souvent en feuilletons et connaissent aussi un grand succès populaire. Mais d'énormes investissements théâtraux ou journalistiques disperseront sa fortune. C'est presque dans la misère que meurt Alexandre Dumas, en 1870.