#borgia 2011

[borgialucrezia]

As someone who is currently watching Borgia: Faith and Fear, I fell in love with Isolda and her Lucrezia and wanted to hear you opinions about her portrayal!

i grew to adore isolda's lucrezia after my second watch which i did recently. i have to confess though i was a bit turned off by faith and fear at first since i was an extreme showtime's the borgias fan !! but now i'm a fan of faith and fear as well and i believe their characters were portrayed more authentically and raw. holliday's lucrezia will always be my favorite, but i love how isolda's lucrezia is more explored in faith and fear because she's more agentive and takes a more active role in political campaigns. her appearance is endearing as well, and she looks exactly like the lucrezia in pintoricchio's painting…so yeah, i think isolda did a tremendous job with lucrezia, exploring even darker aspects of the character, etc.

juan has always been my fav borgia brother in every borgia media but in faith and fear he's the older brother and an overconfident chad and a brute which i didn't really vibe with much (not that he wasn't good but i prefer david oakes's version !! the younger brother who's the pariah among the borgia family, vulnerable and weak, yet hiding behind a bravado facade with a cruel streak to mask his inferiority, going to extreme lengths and does terrible stuff to prove himself to his family and gain their love). though i do love how faith and fear juan's storylines revolve around him and lucrezia more than around him and cesare since the shift in making juan older than cesare made me less interested in the brothers' rivalry.

mark ryder's cesare is the younger brother and he's fascinating and real which makes him my fav borgia brother in faith and fear. his depiction is more historically accurate and distinctly machiavellian, just like his appearance, he looks exactly like cesare in altobello melone's portrait. his characterization is also far more interesting than showtime's version. (don't get me wrong because i do prefer françois arnaud as an actor for cesare and i believe he would have done much more if he had been given the material from faith and fear) but mark's cesare? he was such an entertaining loose cannon through and through without any justifications.

tom fontana was brave enough to make all the characters more realistic without having the narrative backing them up. he's not pushing you to root for anyone, and certainly not for cesare !! unlike showtime's version, where his misdeeds are somehow portrayed as "justified" despite being a selfish megalomaniac who is sly and only serves the family in ways that benefit him, he stands almost at the pinnacle of everyone, with no rivals to challenge him (except for his younger brother who eventually gets nerfed) neil jordan hyped cesare up at juan's expense (throwing all of cesare's negative traits onto him.) he made cesare too competent because he needed him to seem likable and gain the audience's sympathy, trying to fit him into the "conventionally heroic" category but inadvertently making him a sociopath (thank you françois for embracing this unintentional aspect of him). whereas faith and fear's cesare had so many epic twists and turns, he doesn't lie to himself that he's the family's protector, and certainly not lucrezia's protector either, considering how he's inflicting pain on her yet still remains twistedly codependent. there was a moment where he intimidates his own deserting army by shouting to them all the atrocities and murders he committed in his life, then asking them if they can expect any better now that they are betraying him…brilliant !! i would have loved to see showtime's cesare scrambling and reflecting with self-awareness.

in terms of lucrezia and cesare's chemistry…no one is ever beating holliday and françois' portrayal of their relationship that is laced with both twistedness and innocence. they're perfect at the little physical touches and intimacies that they improvised together, and how they built up strong sexual chemistry between cesare and lucrezia from the very beginning, and how their affair caused doom for everyone around them. chemistry like that will never be replicated on screen ever again and that's on that !!

where things have been toned down in showtime's the borgias, such as sex, blood, and violence...faith and fear is more brutal, sleazy, bloody, and sexified. that's why showtime's the borgias is more approachable and comfortable for some viewers; they took a more straightforward route and depicted a simpler perception of the borgia family. personally, what gripped me about showtime's the borgias were the actors' performances, their enthusiasm, the dynamics between cesare/lucrezia/juan and the sensuality laced into the trio's sinister incestuous web. the codependency between cesare and lucrezia, the cain and abel arc between cesare and juan, as well as the costumes, music, and cinematography, all contributed to my investment in the show.

borgia: faith and fear has accents that are all over the place, and the costumes are very questionable, as are the actors' performances and chemistry. but they absolutely knock it out of the park in terms of characterizations and overall creativity in storylines

[leodanbrock]

THE BORGIAS 1.02 — The Assassin

[medievalandfantasymelee]

It's time to determine by popular vote...

Who is the Hottest Cesare Borgia?

Row 1 - Conrad Veidt, Lucrezia Borgia (1922) - Orson Welles, Prince of Foxes (1947)

Row 2 - Macdonald Carey, Bride of Vengeance (1949) - Oliver Cotton, The Borgias (1981)

Row 3 - Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Los Borgia (2006) - Matthew Baynton, Horrible Histories (2009-2014)

Row 4 - Francois Arnaud, The Borgias (2011-2013) - Mark Ryder, Borgia (2011-2014)

This barely scrapes the surface of actors who have portrayed Cesare on screen through the years but these are the ones we were able to 1) track down 2) Find good pictures of.

[pedroam-bang]

The Borgias (2011-2013)

[anghraine]

Just thinking about how, when my favorite show—Showtime's The Borgias—aired in 2011, it was 519 years after the RL version of the events in the first episodes (i.e. since 1492). To compare, the accession of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II (husband of the Byzantine princess Theophanu), and likely the birth of Murasaki Shikibu (author of The Tale of Genji) were as far removed from the real Borgias' lives in 1492 as The Borgias is from the historical events inspiring its premiere.

[mervynbunter]

When it all comes down to dust, I will kill you if I must; I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust, I will help you if I must; I will kill you if I can.

[servuscallidus]

This blog entry was quoted in a post about The Borgias (2011) serie, and it's really quite interesting. It confronts The Borgias (2011) with Borgia: Faith and Fear (2011), and using that to explore the theme of "historical accuracy" in stories. How accurate can a story be, what exactly makes a story historically accurate, should a story even strive for that, what can changing one detail do?

As someone that has watched neither serie, I've found it very interesting and well written. Quite a fun read!

[perioddramapolls]

Period dramas dresses tournament: Black dresses Round 1- Group A: Morgan Pendragon, Camelot (gifset) vs Lucrezia Borgia, Borgia: faith and fear

[alaynasansa]

Queens of the Seven Kingdoms -> Mothers and daughters

[borgialucrezia]

"I've been travelling around Italy for a couple of weeks and after viewing a lot of renaissance and medieval art I understand why casting directors keep putting David Oakes in period dramas. Every painting at the Uffizi Gallery has a man that looks like this. Opposite of an iPhone face." — @guiltyonsundays (x)

[deaddovehasbeeneaten]

Cesare Borgia’s only real strategy is to make every morally dubious man he meets fall in love with him. And then he uses these men to do his bidding. And it just keeps on working.

[vulgardaughter]

do yuo think cesare ever made micheletto eat his own shit to see how loyal a dog he was??

[lifewithaview]

Holliday Grainger and Luke Pasqualino in The Borgias (2011–2013) The French King

S1E6

Lucrezia tends to her husband's injuries and with him unable to rise from his bed, spends more time with the stable boy Paulo, who becomes her lover. The King of Naples proposes a political between his daughter and Juan Borgia, who is not keen on the idea but suggests the younger Gioffre as a more suitable candidate. Upon seeing her he reconsiders but soon becomes her lover.Cesare meanwhile continues to pursue Ursula, whose husband has disappeared.When she learns of her husband's death, she knows Cesare is responsible and refuses to be with him. In France, Cardinal Della Rovere meets King Charles VIII who agrees to try and unseat the Borgia Pope, especially after he hears of the proposed union through marriage of Rome and Naples.

*By inviting him to cross his borders with no resistance, it was the Duke of Milan, not Cardinal Della Rovere that encouraged King Charles to invade Italy to pursue his Neapolitan claims.

[pedroam-bang]

The Borgias (2011-2013)

[lostinfic]

apriki:

Lucrezia/Cesare Borgia asked by gredandforge-weasley, who didn’t leave an AU setting so I chose modern New York, in which Lucrezia is a stylish and sociopathic black widow serial killer, and Cesare is the corrupt police detective who covers her tracks and leads the investigation in the wrong direction because they are erotically codependent

He promised himself that he would never speak of it, of them - the men who he dumped in the river for her - but one day he could not help himself, and he asked her if she had ever felt lonely. She looked up from her dresser, where she had been trying on lipstick; reds and rouge and vermillion. “I’m never lonely, sweet brother”, she said, their eyes locked in her mirror, “I have you.”

[mervynbunter]

Peter Sullivan in outtakes of season 2 of The Borgias (2011)