† PROFILE †
NAME: Lucrezia Sforza (née Borgia)
AGE: 15
ORIGIN: The Vatican, 1493
ALIAS: Pope's daughter, Lady of Pesaro
BIRTHDAY: April 18
ASPIRE: To be Cesare's Héloïse, her family's happiness.
FAMILY: her father Pope Alexander VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia), her mother Vanozza dei Cattanei; her brothers Cesare Borgia, Juan Borgia, Joffre Borgia; her husband Giovanni Sforza
HISTORY: Lucrezia is the third child of Rodrigo Borgia and Vanozza dei Cattanei, after Cesare and Juan, and the easiest one to love, ever joyful and sweet-tempered. Cesare was too severe, Juan too careless while little Joffre was all too often forgotten. But she was the one who glowed with mirth, threw platitudes on the family's dinner table when the tension began to rise, the one treasured by all ("We shall have a wedding, if only to see dear Lucrezia again"). She learned early on that she could tug on people's heartstrings and wound them around her little fingers. Cesare may have caught the worst case of this but fortunately for him the road went both ways. He was the one she loves best.
While her two older brothers were each groomed for their respective positions, one in the cloth and the other in armor, she stayed in the safety of the Borgia villas adjacent to the Vatican City. Rome's best tutors taught her in the necessary education of a noblewoman of her time; literature, languages and manners. Her mother taught her how to walk and talk and dance with sprezzatura. Cesare when he visits, which is often, taught her of politics and religion and intrigue, albeit unintentionally.
Her family were her only companions at this time, aside from the servants, though that changed when her father was chosen to be the Pope of Rome. The Borgias were thrust into the spotlight with the greater power they now wield, along with many more enemies circling them. Soon after her father's ascension, Lucrezia was married off to a supposed ally who could help protect their grip on power, the Sforzas. She gladly agreed to it, understanding that it would be for the good of the family. She even tried to learn how to be a good wife, to please her husband so that she could protect the allegiance, learning the many ways to kiss a man from Giulia Farnese, her father's mistress.
But her husband was a brute with a great dislike for the Borgias. He raped her when he wasn't beating her, or off massacring deers. Still, she wanted to maintain the flimsy allegiance between Borgia and Sforza, so she kept the incidents to herself lest her father and Cesare retaliate with fury, as he has warned ("I shall cut his heart out with a dinner knife--and serve it to you"). She endured the marriage until she found a way to lessen the torture. She made Paolo the groom, whom she had wrapped around her fingers, adjust her husband's saddle that he would fall and return home broken, tamed. They succeeded. In the time that Giovanni Sforza was confined to his bed, Lucrezia would ride his horse out with the groom, stealing precious time. Paolo was her first taste of sexual pleasure, of love aside from the all-consuming one for her brother.
ABILITIES: She speaks Spanish, Italian, French and Greek fluently with a functional and "very correct" Latin.
PERSONALITY: Lucrezia is named the most beautiful treasure the Vatican contains for a reason. She is the apple of her father's eyes, the infamous Pope Alexander VI, the very voice of God who wields the power to crown and uncrown the princes of Europe. She is most beloved by Cesare Borgia, the charismatic and ruthless cardinal with a master assassin at his right hand, also the pope's son, her brother. All this doting has made her somewhat spoiled and she approaches most people with the expectation that they would adore her as much as her family has. Despite her appearance, timidity isn't a word that can be used to describe her.
She is also, of course, beautiful, with stars in her bright blue eyes, the fairest skin, high cheekbones and curled blonde hair that streams behind her like some gilded raiment. She has the air of innocence, of joy and childlike wonder coupled with a saintly aura about her and such grace that she seems to walk on air. Her disarming smile and unfettered gaiety can disarm the most senile and hardened men, like Giovanni Sforza and later on King Charles VIII of France.
Lucrezia is also kinder than most. She treats everyone around her, including children, outsiders and servants with as much curiosity, respect and kindness as members of nobility, drawing no differences in social standing. It is perhaps her own circumstance that allows her to regard others with no judgment whatsoever. She was born as the illegitimate daughter of a then Spanish (as in outsider) Cardinal and a courtesan.
She has no grounds with which to judge others, no matter how wealthy or powerful her family becomes. She has an uncanny ability to seem ever joyful despite the circumstances. This may just be due to her complexion or the curve of her lips, but she manages to exude an undefeated joie de vivre in even the dreariest of instances. There are exceptions, such as with people she trusts enough to let down her guard, such as her family.
The bright-eyed child who never stops asking what? why? but how? she finds wonder in the littlest things and makes it up when reality doesn't hand it to her. A romantic and an idealist, she crafts fanciful stories in her head about love, thunder, even leaves swaying in the wind (little cherubs with their red cheeks full of air, blowing the poor leaf to and fro). The ever-present twinkle in her eyes never fails to make you feel as if, at this very moment, you are the most interesting person in the world.
But appearances doth deceive. She is a Borgia too, through and through, with as much intelligence and knack for climbing the stairs toward power and social status as the rest of them. Giulia has proven to be an effective tutor and Lucrezia is fast learning the rules of intrigue and what weapons a woman wields in her society; beauty and wit and charm. She uses them for weaving her feminine wiles on unsuspecting noblemen, who underestimate her influence simply because she is a pretty little thing, and for playing the part of a damsel in distress, the innocent child, the one who could do no wrong. Her husband never once suspected that she was the one who planted those traps to injure him and King Charles later never doubted that she truly believed he didn't mean to invade Rome. Even Cesare is fooled into thinking her soul is of the purest white, and he was the one who knew her the very best.
The Borgia family is extremely close-knit, intimate. Their bonds are thicker, thicker than blood. She understands that it has always been and will always be a case of us against them. The standards are different when it comes to family. It is irrelevant that the actions of her father and her brothers may be wrong, because they are her family and she would support them trough thick and thin, right or wrong, which was why she kept the rapes and beatings by her husband to herself, because it would endanger the much-needed allegiance with Sforza. It is a price she gladly pays for the family's sake.
Her intentional disregard for morality and ethics has shown itself a number of times, because what's written in the papers is vastly different than life. She knows this. As her father says, "for those destined to dominate others, the ordinary rules of life are turned upside down and duty acquires an entirely new meaning." Good and evil take on strange forms. She knows her Bible well enough to know what it says about right or wrong but her father is the contemporary voice of God, too, and what he deems good is what is good for the family, so she follows through. The greatest evil would be to betray the family, greater than even murder. Lucrezia would maintain a saintly facade, a kind and chaste woman who would faint at the very thought of poisoning an enemy, but her soul is far from the purest white, tinged with all shades of grey. She would lie, lie, lie if it meant well for her father, her brothers, her mother.
LOSS: Lucrezia is extremely good at keeping her lips shut, especially when it comes to matters about her family and herself. She knows much more than she lets on and she keeps a tight lid on that as well, even around her family. In Paradisa, she will find this ability severely undermined. She will have a secret or two echoing in her head like a mantra until she blurts it out to the unfortunate person who happens to be around. The secret can be as menial as what she had for breakfast and it can be as grave as her admitting to Cesare that her husband rapes and beats her, but it will be something she meant to keep to herself but can't. It would be an interesting tool for plotting, for her character and for those she interacts with in the castle. After all, it could also be a secret she is keeping for someone else.