#however the sforzas of milan have claimed me and my attention

[brother-emperors]

do you have anything on where to start with.... the whole borgia stuff? either that or ascansio, who I am very very curious about. I don't mind reading, especially when I can take notes, but shows/movies work too! if you get to this, thank you sir!

probably Johann Burchard's diary! in particular, I'd start off with this one, which isn't the full text of Burchard's entries, but it's a pretty good introduction to the scene imo (you can decide for yourself after if you want to read the entirety of his entries)

I'd also recommend watching Showtime's Borgias because it's one of my favorite shows and was partially responsible for what eventually spiraled out into an obsession with Ascanio and the Sforza family

if someone has recommendations for the Borgia family, feel free to chime in! I don't tend to venture very far away from the Vatican or Machiavelli when it comes to the Borgia family.

speaking of Ascanio: he's tricky because that guy was everywhere. you'll find him in Machiavelli's writing, you'll find him in music history texts, a lot of work on Josquin des Prez uses Ascanio as an anchor point. there's one biography on him (in italian) and it has a specific focus because if it tried covering everything, it probably would've gone well over a thousand pages. he has his own tag here, you can skip the art and jump to the citations and browse through them to see what looks interesting!