Alla corte dei Borgia (The Borgia Bride), Jeanne Kalogridis

SO WHO GAVE JEANNE KALOGRIDIS PERMISSION TO EXIST. AND WHY DOES SHE HAVE A PUBLISHING CONTRACT?

(It’s okay; someday I’m going to outsell this woman. That is a promise: I’m going to fix it!)

Let’s talk about this. List-based catharsis is the best kind.

10. Jeanne Kalogridis spells shit wrong and it’s ugly.

We’re going to start small here. I am aware—that this isn’t even icing on the cake, that this is the cherry garnish on top of the icing if anything at all, but even so, it’s a shitty cherry and is indicative of everything bigger that is to follow. That being said, she is way more baffled by Italian than anyone who’s writing on the Italian Renaissance has a right to be. “Cantarella” is spelled with one ‘e’, not two, all right; also LOL SHE WROTE A BOOK AND MISSPELLED HER PROTAGONIST’S NAME LOL. Sancha, really now. I am a straight-up preferentialist of Italian spellings, and Sancia » Sancha, amiright, yesiam, it is also more situationally accurate to place and period. But okay, subjectivity there; this is small potatoes, isn’t it? That she’d rather Anglicise obnoxiously than Italianise correctly, we could surely chalk this up to an artistic choice, you could make an argument for my ridiculous pedantry here and I would probably #kanyeshrug and not disagree. That being said, here is the thing that hit me as I was reading today—Lucrezia’s best-known handmaiden, historically is called Penthesilea, or Pentesilea, Pantisilia, Pantisilea, whatever, names are transient, I acknowledge this. Somehow, though, Kalogridis decided on Pantsilea. Pretty sure that’s not a spelling that has ever existed. Pantsilea. PANTSilea. Shut up I’m a child and it’s the little things that keep you from snerking when supporting characters get dead—or not, as the case may be. Snerk. She doesn’t have a character, now she’s dead, sorry all I see is PANTS. Bye tho.

9. Our Jeanne is awfully bloody pleased with herself, and I would just love to know why.

I was looking at the back of the book and lolling over the fact that she has written “numerous dark fantasy novels”—not that I’ve any vendetta against fantasy at large, but this woman is Laurell K. Hamilton lite and thus even more out of her depth here than she would be anywhere. I’ll bet that she has, indeed, and I’ll bet they’re just full of ~sassy~ females and the cocks who love them. Can we take a moment for the first sentence preceding the novel:

This novel centers around a woman thrust into the role of a hero.

Yeah, no, this novel has exactly dick to do with hero structure and your main character is a sappy simpering “strong-woman” cipher. GIRL BYE. You make claims like that, you back your shit up, but mother of fuck this woman does not do her research. I don’t think she knows how. Like why would she. One of the “delicious nuggets of history” (ah-huh) she refers to as “recorded fact” is “[Lucrezia’s] incest with her brother and father” and UM. YEAH. RECORDED BY PROPAGANDISTS, YOU ENORMOUS DOUCHE. Check your sources. Oh but there are no sources at the end of the book! Well. Gosh. That would say a mouthful, but the book pretty much says it all.

(I have this weirdly intense aggravation with the way she mentions Cesare’s death-date: “interestingly, he died not long after her”, like, really? I am pretty sure he had so many more things on his mind than his ex-mistress, okay. Viana was not suicide because one of his conquests kicked it. Really. That’s kind of insulting, really. But then—this is Kalogridis, who does not give a fuck about anything except her myopic mistress narrative.)

8. Sorry, but your protagonist wants to fuck your brother, her judgy ass is invalid.

So you should let her and lay a lighter hand with the blatant hypocrisy, miss. If Sancha had owned up to her enormous boner for her brother, I’m pretty sure I would have liked her more. On which note, LOL OMG SHE MADE THIS WOMAN A PRUDE. She rectified the amazing revolving door that was Sancia d’Aragona’s actual bedroom (one man in the castle allowed in the vicinity, one man and he was eighty) by saying that it was propaganda put about by a random Borgia relation. Because Borgias are the Antichrist and the house of Aragon is pure~~ and LOL LOL LOL NO. Actually funniest, and speaking of Sancha’s ridiculousness with regard to her family:

So it was that my darling nephew’s own mother considered him more of a member of the House of Borgia than of Aragon.

LOL LOL his mother is Lucrezia Borgia, what is the entire point of being a Borgia, HOW DID YOU EVEN THINK THIS WORKED, Sanchhhha? Don’t get all sniffy just because you have the intuition of a pancake; this is some 101 hierarchy of Borgia, okay. If you think you come in second, it’s only because you do.

(On which note, lol I still find time to ship my kids, even though they’re supposed to be ~EVIL~. Kalogridis is not smart enough to write them, but historical OTP performs inception anyway, and their scenes are pieces of incepted stealth-fabulousness-if-poorly-written-it-is-still-Kalogridis that she tries and fails to rectify later. Can’t fight it: not their “not an embrace of brother and sister” kisses and her being the queen to his king and her “dimpling” and “brightening” at him and generally the two of them being two, can’t fucking fight. Never mind that one time that Kalogridis mentions him plucking a chocolate out of her décolleté and genuinely seems to believe she can make this a neutral moment, woman how on earth do you think things work. Soz: haters gonna fucking hate, and that includes you, Sancha with an H.)

7. DIS BITCH.

SANCHA. Sancha is the worst ever, and—insult to injury—the book is written in first person. You cannot escape her being the worst. You cannot escape her constant delusions of grandeur—which, I love delusions of grandeur, but couple them with delusions of purity and stick your reader inside that character’s head, inside that internal monologue of nonstop masturbatory judginess, and everyone is going to want to go crazy. Who wants to live here? Who wants to listen to 500(!) pages of this chick talking about “her clear strong voice” and her nonstop huffing-off in perpetually swirling skirts and her cataloguing of her perfectly proportioned body, about how she is hotter and smarter and feistier than anyone in the vicinity and the only one who can stop the ~~EVIL~~ of the Borgias with true moral righteousness and rectitude and fury and ~evil~ that she inherited from her mad father that is obviously not real evil because it’s not Borgia evil so blah blah blah and and and. She never shuts up, she complains about every damn thing; by the time her brother is dead, her yelling about everything isn’t even new. Emotional trajectories: no one has them. No one. But especially not: dis bitch, who is the hollow shell of an interesting, fun woman and a shallow cipher Sue bar none. (Can we talk about how little respect Kalogridis has for genuinely historically strong women? She describes Caterina Sforza as “pure” at one point. NO. YOU’RE MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT. You cannot make a virgin from a virago, and fuck off with your trying to.)

6. Lucrezia, Lucrezia, whither Lucrezia fucking Borgia?

So, speaking of—

Physically, she belied her reputation: she was no beauty—

Oh.

Lucrezia had resorted to outlandish behavior out of childishness.

Oh.

She is mad with naïveté or more foolish than I ever knew.

Oh.

Really, now. You want to know who wouldn’t care about this woman’s complaining? The Governor of Spoleto, advisor and occasional substitute to the Pope, outwitter of Isabella d’Este’s spies, HBIC Lucrezia Borgia, who has the Borgia mind and no status as victim. Every primary source chalks her up to be both joyous and absurdly canny, please explain why anyone would ever decide to paint her as a weeping victim, tainted by and regretful of her family? NO. Oh—but to make her a foil and a lesser, I see. God, she’s written with an amazing amount of contempt, and it’s entirely to place her beneath Sanchhhhha, to use her as the foil—who’s weak, who’s less appealing, who is not allowed agency just so that the protagonist can look really super awesome when she does things like spit in people’s faces (she does that a lot) or yell in public about EVIL EVIL EVIL like a Savonarola in swirling skirts (she does that more than you can possibly imagine). See, she doesn’t do those things because she has the emotional subtlety of a mallet-head; she does them because she is a Strong Spine-Having Woman, as opposed to Lucrezia’s cast as Weak Spineless Object. Historical Lucrezia would have no time for any of this shit.

Also, just a pet peeve, Kalogridis randomly decides to say that Sancha urges Lucrezia to write poetry of her own, which she does, “timidly”. Biiiiitch—she was writing poems (bless, I want to read them, I live in doubt that they’re good, but bless) when she was thirteen. This is not about you. Lucrezia Borgia’s life: not about you.

5. Cesare Borgia, schizoid personality.

What I said about no one having an emotional trajectory? Yeah. This guy. This guy has no arc, and I think she is trying to make him have one, but no, she is actually just throwing personality traits into a vacuum because bitch didn’t check her sources and thus has no idea how this man works. Ambition? Nah, he wants to give up the cloth to have lots of sex and babies with Sancha. Except no, because he’s being used as his father’s instrument. Except no, because he just likes killing things, because he’s ~evil~. Do you doubt me with the ~evil~? “Evilly” is actually an adverb that gets used. More than once. Read this book, and “evil” will stop looking like a word. Basically, Cesare is a dick she rides until she decides that he is evil and then tada! He is! Oh wow, perceptive of her, only no. Also, he writes her the most hilarious love letter:

I shall await you with my heart in my hands, as a gift.

Not for her, buddy. Not for her. Things that Cesare Borgia would not say:

I have never had such an incredible experience with a woman. I think I have never known love before now, Sancha.

LOL LOL YOU HAD ELEVEN ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN AND NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO ANYONE BUT YOUR SISTER LOL. You are a lance-breaker supreme; what are you doing acting like an awkward teenage virgin? (Even Ursula is a damn sight better than this already, for that show knows exactly what it’s doing with her; o “I love you to the point of madness” while-not-looking-at-you hilarity.) This dude is not a Machiavel; this dude is a “velvet-voiced/mannered” device. Things you would never say about Cesare Borgia: that he was a device. Fucking oi, Kalogridis, were you never assigned Machiavelli in college?

Pet peeve, because apparently this has become a theme here: Kalogridis bangs on for the entire story about the austerity of his clothing. No. Cesare Borgia dressing in black is a huge, iconic deal when it happens precisely because it’s a huge change. He dresses with full Renaissance-prince fabulousness until he goes to France, and then he comes back with an Order of Michael and an even grander sense of his own theater. Nitpick, yes, but this woman—she just doesn’t get it. It, him, them, any of it.

4. “Warm fluid”

(Ew.)

This woman needs to stop writing sex forever. If I had a boner, I think it would shrivel up and fall off out of general principle. Won’t quote further; I’ll spare you lot that—I will say, though, that in the middle of sex she is apparently “lost” to, Sancia takes the time to note:

I was no more an ordinary lover to him than he to me.

Aw, even orgasm can’t stop the ego rock! Do you want a cookie, Sanch, or what?

3. SUPER SUBTLE SUBTLETIES.

Afterwards, in my bed, I dreamed of the card the strega had drawn for me: The heart, pierced by two swords, by evil and by good. Rodrigo Borgia stood before me, smiling, and opened up the breast of his white satin robe to reveal a red heart beating therein, skewered by two swords in the shape of a silver X.

One of the swords was much larger than its mate; I stepped forward and pulled it out. It came forth bloodied, but beneath the crimson stain I could easily read the legend inscribed on the blade.

EVIL.

Hm. I don’t know what she could be implying here.

2. The most awkward prose you will ever see? The MOST awkward prose you will ever see.

Success came early to Juan—much to Cesare’s annoyance. (“God mocks me, letting my witless brother win through accident, not skill!”)

THIS SENTENCE. I’M STILL LAUGHING. This is the part at which I actually teared up (and yeah figured I was probably a little emotionally overstretched but OH, LORD). I’m still giggling, looking at it. Just. This sentence.

Why tho.

(I don’t want to ~ruin it~ but at the same time I don’t know if anyone else finds it as hysterical as I do—that she stuck her one, perfunctory, terrible line of dialogue in parentheses, like it’s a summary or an essay. It’s just so—cursory and sad, yo.)

also there is this one part where she and Cesare have sex and he wants to leave and she grabs his leg and they fall over and it is clearly supposed to be adorbs but it is written in the most stilted language ever and I don’t even know what to do except lol forever:

Dignified Cesare, always in control, snickered in helpless surprise at the unexpectedness of the act. Nonetheless, he continued onward, struggling toward the carafe of wine, certainly thinking that I would not persist in such childlike behavior.

KALOGRIDIS IS A ROBOT AND SEXY IS NOT IN THE PROGRAMMING.

1. EVERYTHING.

Redeeming qualities: none. Kalogridis can’t sit with me.