The celebrated historical novelist writes a life of Cesare Borgia and his family - and a case for the defense, in an age in which it was customary to draw the Borgias as devils incarnate. The rise of the Borgia family; the rule of Alexander VI; the campaigns of Ceasare; and the life and marriages of Lucrezia. This swashbuckling debunks much nineteenth-century romance, relying for chronology on the Liber Notarum of Johannes Burchard, Alexander's master of ceremonies.