Incest! Lust! Murder! and that's just today! (I can hardly wait for til tomorrow!) As it always is - and has been - rumors swirl around the rich, powerful, and beautiful - and Lucrezia was all 3. The daughter of a Cardinal (later Pope Alexander VI), and the sister of the reputed model for Machiavelli's The Prince (the redoubtable Cesare Borgia, himself a Cardinal thanks to Daddy), it takes some kind of woman to make herself more than a mere footnote in history. Although today's women may choke with outrage at the way the men in her life bartered her about (she wasn't just married 3 times, but engaged several other times - J Lo isn't the first to marry up, you know), the men she married were pawns of their families as well. Still, given the parameters of her time, she was able to take charge of her life and lived it largely in the way she wished. No small feat - but then, it never is!

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