#micheletto corella

[earlgodwin]

— Has your heart ever been sick, Micheletto? There are some who would doubt I even have a heart, my lady. Well, Unfortunately, I do. And mine is weeping.

(requested by anon)

[dailyborgia]

THE BORGIAS (2011-2013) Season 1, Episode 1 "The Poisoned Chalice"

[girl-bateman]

wildest first day at work tbh

[userkayjay]

THE BORGIAS 2.06

[albaharu]

my beloved assassin from the borgias

[princesssarcastia]

delighted by the series finale of the borgias

holy shit!!!!!

FUCK!

let me start again.

the slowest burn

the slowest burn on this show was not, in fact, lucrezia/cesare—it was cesare/the papal armies. it was cesare/his father's trust. Cesare could only find himself in possession of these things at the very end because they're overwhelmingly transformative. We spent two seasons watching his brother, Juan, faff about, completely inept, unable to accomplish almost any task the pope sets for him. And then! Cesare takes command and it really is like god smiles on him and everything is suddenly possible. Suddenly, for one shining moment, it seems like the world really is ripe for the taking.

This was of course foreshadowed as far back as the first episode, when Cesare, cloaked in an archbishop's robes, steps in with a sword to easily, handily, save his brother from two random dudes he got into a fight with on the street. It's perfectly emblematic of what's to come.

Micheletto and the case of courtly love

The return of Micheletto!!!! Micheletto my love!! My darling dearest. Talk about the platonic ideal of courtly love—his devotion to Cesare, his love for Cesare, his impulse to serve him, outweighs even his hatred and his grief. To have him come back one last time, grant Cesare one last gift, one that wins him his first battle decisively? How utterly fantastic.

And of course, when Micheletto says it's over and done with and he's dead as far as anyone is concerned, Cesare lets him go. First of all, because there's no way in hell he could stop him. Second of all, because of course Cesare loves him, too. Trusts him.

One great parallel drawn is between Cesare/Micheletto and Caterina/Rufio. Two nobles who remain ennobled by their left hands of death whom they trust utterly and, apparently, love beyond anyone else. Cesare lets Micheletto go...and Caterina lets Rufio go. Gives him her blessing to go serve a new master once she's finally gone—once he ensure that she's finally gone. You could read it as Caterina searching to put a failsafe into place, to put someone in Cesare's household that can one day free her or continue to work to her ends. But honestly? I think the most Rufio will ever do for her again is slip into her rooms one night and see her dead, like she asked. A last kindness for the Lady he served his whole life.

Caterina Sforza meets her end

Caterina Sforza, my love, you were fantastic, and you lost in a spectacular fashion fitting your spectacular legend and comportment. Ten more sons! The Tigress of Forli indeed!

I thought her storyline was also tragically beset by in-universe sexism; the way those other Italian lords abandoned her cause for Cesare the second he gathered an army of his own must have burned. Certainly, it ensured there was no way for her to win. But everything she accomplished in spite of that is all the more impressive, to the very end.

It's also interesting, because as she had to deal with sexism, so too have the Borgias dealt with that classic european mix of nativism and racism, and no one else spells it out quite like Caterina does. At the very end, the second she's well and truly lost:

"Damn you, Spanish half-breed," she says to Cesare, who just prevented her from killing herself.

Her family was originally supposed to be allied with the Borgias! The Sforzas and the Borgias, bound together by Lucrezia's marriage to her first husband. But the Sforzas spurned the alliance at every turn, refusing to provide the promised military aid, and on a more personal level, allowing Giovanni to beat Lucrezia and generally treat her like shit.

Why? Because the Borgias are outsiders. Because they're a bunch of Spaniards in an Italian world, and the italians can't help but punish them for it. Why should the Sforzas keep their word to a bunch of spanish half-breeds?

Why should a bunch of italian men keep their word to an italian woman?

Caterina Sforza sits at a very neat intersection of prejudices, and I find it fascinating.

Lucrezia now firmly resides in a tragedy

There's also a fantastic comparison to be had between Cesare's love for Lucrezia and his love for Micheletto. Both of them, he would trust with power and authority—he tells his mother he misses Micheletto's counsel and skill. He tells Machiavelli he would make his sister the regent of Naples. But here lies the difference: Micheletto he would allow to walk free, to live as he chooses. Lucrezia will never, ever be afforded that privilege. Never.

"You will be naked, and clean, and bloodless again. And mine."

FUCK.

Watching him kneel at her side, as she lies next to her husband's recent bloody corpse, and try to wipe her clean...that's romance. Creepy, terrifying, devoted love. An insidious inversion of the tender care he's shown for her the whole show up to this point. He'll continue to love her, care for her and her son and her happiness, no doubt. But there can also be no doubt that Lucrezia is completely at the mercy of a much more powerful man once again.

Literally the last lines of the whole show is a creepy incestuous declaration of possession. Cesare owns Lucrezia, now. I'd be shocked, in this universe the show constructed, if she ever married again. Certainly, now that their father has given Cesare the keys to the kingdom, has decided he'll trust his first-born son with both their ambitions, I can't see him denying Cesare anything, even Lucrezia—so long as he's discrete.

I mean...the pair of them DID keep making out in front of servants and also minor lordlings who owe Cesare allegiance. It's not like it's a total secret at this point. And still, they follow him.

Poor Lucrezia. I think if Rodrigo and Cesare had literally just included her, treated her like, if not an equal, at least someone with skin in the game whom they trust, this could have turned from the tragedy it was to a triumph, for her.

Instead, she has to beg for scraps of news Rodrigo can barely give her, and grant her husband a mercy killing after her brother stabs him mortally but doesn't finish the job.

Cesare's new preoccupation with legitimacy

There's also a fantastic scene between Cesare and Vanozza, his mother. His mother, the courtesan, the whore, who offers her son her counsel, offers to ride to war with him so he has someone he can trust by his side! Something he had just finished telling her he desperately missed (Micheletto my love you are irreplaceable)

And...he turns her down.

He not only turns her down, he does so in a way that's eerily reminiscent of his dead brother, Juan. His dead brother whom he murdered.

"I would not be the son of a whore," Cesare says to his mother, the whore. Suddenly, after his father shared his dream of creating a Papal Bloodline, to be passed down to Cesare so he in turn can pass it down to his own son...suddenly, now, he begins to care about the very perceptions that eventually drove Juan to dangle his nephew over a balcony and sign his own death warrant. It is, to me, the second most chilling moment in the whole episode, after what he says to Lucrezia.

Now, Vanozza might not be trapped like her daughter, but she may soon be consigned to insignificance, without any responsibility or meaning, but also without any power. Relevant only as much as Cesare loves her or wants to see her. Which, before this episode, I would have said was quite a lot! But if he's about to descend into the same game of legitimacy and legend and perception his brother did...perhaps not so much.

Rodrigo and Cesare and the death of daddy issues

We spent three seasons watching Rodrigo dismiss and belittle and refuse to trust Cesare, but finally, in this episode, we come to see the truth: that he always meant for Cesare to succeed him in the only way that matters to him: in the church. He made him a cardinal so he could one day be pope, after him! Made him a prince of the church! But Cesare was also right to miss and lust after traditional station of power, after the dukedoms and armies he amasses after forcing his father to let him renounce his position as cardinal, because the empire they both want to build is impossible without them.

Still: to realize, with Cesare, that even though Rodrigo sees so much of himself in Cesare, he still planned from the beginning to make Cesare his true heir...what a payoff. What a relief. What a consolation for years of feelings of inadequacy! Of never being enough!

No wonder he's riding high, immortal, invincible, Cesar come again. All his daddy issues went "poof" and left him, well, clean.

All told?

In the end, having now watched all of it, I have to say the whole show was marvelous. Politics, intrigue, romance, forbidden romance, the things people do for family or for love or for both, the things they do for power, how lonely it is to sit at the pinnacle of the world. The costuming, the writing, the dialogue, it's all so compelling, and I frankly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in period dramas

P.S.

Contender for funniest line in the whole fucking show:

"Primogeniture is the future," the pope of rome says.

CACKLING oh my god. that's hilarious. definitely, that is a thing that will happen for the papacy and the world at large.

SureJan.gif

[andrewknightley]

Sean Harris as Micheletto Corella - The Borgias

[wednesdayche]

good dog

[monstraduplicia]

cesare borgia and micheletto corella | intricate rituals

for @emiliosandozsequence

josé olivarez, citizen illegal // the borgias, the borgia bull // the borgias, the assassin // anika, he hit me // the borgias, the borgias in love

[whoisthatmovinginthedark]

Out of all the stories I've seen or read of late that have the lovers say some variation of "If I am to die, I only hope it's you who kills me" Micheletto and Pascal actually went through with it. And because I was so touched by the few scenes of awkward softness from that stone hearted man, my initial reaction was that surely there must have been another way. Micheletto ended up quitting his service in any case, couldn't he have done it with Pascal (in a case Pascal had been willing to quit his service as well)?

But the Micheletto who would be able to quit his service was born the moment Pascal died. That Micheletto didn't exist before making that kill.

They were both men who put their duty and service before their love. They had both already hurt each other for the ones they served, and it was ongoing. There could never be peace and long future living like that.

Pascal could have run, but he knew it would make Micheletto think their love hadn't been genuine and true, and he would live the rest of his (most likely short) life marked for death. And so he chose to prove his love this way. And die on his own terms. Rather than being hunted and killed down the road.

And so it was inevitable.

(May Micheletto find love again in his new life.)

[earlgodwin]

(If Cesare is dissatisfied that Micheletto isn't his brother instead of Juan) "Not exactly, because Cesare and Micheletto's relationship is more or less secret, hidden. They don't know too much about each other. Well, Micheletto has absolutely no grasp of what the rest of Cesare's life is, and Cesare is very respectful of Micheletto being so secretive about himself, and I don't think he really wants to know. It's not really a friendship, because there is an idea of hierarchy, but it's not master and slave, either. It's not boss and employee. It's something very complex. It's not equal, but there is a lot of trust. While with Juan, I think it all comes from a very deep place. His brother faces different struggles and is very naive, so Cesare pushes him by teaching him lessons. He also understands how hard it must be to do that, or at least he had good intentions towards him in the beginning, with some sort of really loving brotherly undertone under all of this hard teaching." — François Arnaud

[ihavemanyhusbands]

NOOO THIS IS TORTURE 😭 Lucrezia imprisoned in Naples and convening with a witch, Micheletto getting his heart totally destroyed and and and there’s war in the horizon that Cesare is gonna lead

AND YOU WANT TO TELL ME THERES ONLY TWO EPISODES LEFT OF THIS SHOW???? 😭😭😭

[girl-bateman]

He's an assassin ! He's illiterate ! He's a child murderer ! He's gay ! He's got daddy issues ! He's just a silly little guy !

[die-auster]

If you feel like it you can support me on my Ko-fi.

[albaharu]

77!!

You're my kind of guy 'Cos I like your style And you sound as horrible as me And I don't mind If you're unkind You're reminding me of me

My Kind of Guy by Kaiser Chiefs

🎵Send me a number from 1 to 100 and I will do a drawing based on the song from my Spotify Wrapped Most Listed Songs 🎵 (now closed)

[princesssarcastia]

calling all Leverage fans out there:

if you're at all interested or preoccupied with Elliot Spencer's relationship with Damien Moreau, can I interested you in Micheletto and Cesare Borgia's relationship in The Borgias?

Consider a man. A dangerous man; perhaps the most dangerous man in the world. A man for hire, well-versed in death and spycraft and making things happen for the rich and the powerful. And one day—one day that dangerous man meets a powerful man, a powerful man he chooses to serve, to do terrible bloody work for. Anything and everything the powerful man asks, the dangerous man does, to the point where the powerful man trusts the dangerous man implicitly, without instruction or specification. To the point where the dangerous man becomes an extension of his will, of his self.

Until one day, the dangerous man is asked to do something so horrific, he can't bear to work for the powerful man anymore, and he walks away.

And the powerful man lets him.

God, does that not sound exactly like Elliot's history with Moreau? Have any Leverage season 4 aficionados ever wanted to see what that service looked like, from both sides?

Well, here's your chance. And truly, Micheletto (here, our Elliot analogue) and Cesare's (Moreau) relationship bookends the whole show; shapes it; makes all things possible and delivers something meaningful and emotional and horrific, all the same.