The Justice Of The Duke: Tales of Cesare Borgia
About this ebook
Cesare Borgia, former cardinal, Duke of Valentinois and Romanga, tyrant and warlord, has been a figure of awe and scorn for generations. The romance of Borgia’s tumultuous life has been the topic of romances, tragedies, operas, and films, television shows. Friend and patron to Leonardo da Vinci, his rise and fall inspired Machiavelli to write The Prince and Friedrich Nietzsche to write Beyond Good And Evil.
Among those inspired by this prince of Italy was famed author Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk). In Borgia, Sabatini finds a real-life version of his fictional heroes—a brilliant man betrayed and wronged. Only this time, the man is not just wronged by his friends and foes. He is wronged by all of history. Compelled to explore this fascinating historical figure’s true nature, Sabatini wrote a biography and a play. But his best work is in his favourite writing style: historical fiction. With characteristic Sabatini flair, the master of the genre brings Borgia life as no one has before.
Drawn to the passion, suspicion, betrayal, and ambition of Borgia’s brief but exciting life, Sabatini presents seven short stories set during the Italian Renaissance: The Honour Of Varano, The Test, Ferrante's Jest, Gisimondi's Wage, The Snare, The Lust Of Conquest, and The Pasquinade.
These stories are collected in the volume Sabatini entitled The Justice Of The Duke.
About the author
Rafael Sabatini was an Italian/English novelist born in Lesi, Italy, on April 29, 1875. The illegitimate child of Anna Trafford, an English pianist, and Vincenzo Sabatini, an Italian opera singer, he was exposed to the Arts from a young age. Over the course of his first two decades, young Rafael lived in a variety of locations: the English village of Maghull, the Portuguese city of Porto, a boarding school in Switzerland, and finally Liverpool.
Here, seventeen-year-old Rafael worked as a translator for the Brazilian trades. Rafael married Ruth Goad Dixon, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant. They had a son, Rafael-Angelo, affectionately nicknamed ‘Binkie.’
Writing from an early age, he sold short stories to periodical literary magazines like Pearson’s Magazine, London Magazine, and Royal Magazine. But success eluded him. Greeting frustration with more effort, he continued to pursue his writing, penning thirty-eight novels, eight plays, and dozens of short stories, as well as nonfiction works.
It took twenty-five years of effort before his works of historical fiction, full of sword fighting and drama, became popular literature. He was at last propelled to fame by the publication of Scaramouche in 1921.
In 1927, Binkie and Ruth were involved in a car accident, which tragically claimed Binkie’s life. Three years later, Rafael and Ruth divorced, the loss of their son was a strain too great for their already unhappy marriage.
Exhausted from writing and nursing his broken heart, Rafael then moved to Clock Mill, near Hay-on-Wye. He embraced fishing and focused on writing shorter stories. In 1935 he married Christine Dixon, a talented sculptor (also his former sister-in-law). Tragedy struck again when Rafael’s stepson, Lancelot Steele Dixon, died in a plane crash as he flew over their family home on the day he received his RAF wings.
The very next year would see Sabatini’s greatest success, as his novel Captain Blood reached the big screen starring Errol Flynn.
Sabatini died on February 13, 1950, following a battle with stomach cancer. He was laid to rest in Adelboden, Switzerland, which was his favorite skiing location. Christine sculpted a touching memorial piece depicting a man face down, holding a pen inscribing the first line from Scaramouche:
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
David Blixt is an author and actor living in Chicago. An Artistic Associate of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where he serves as the resident Fight Director, he is also co-founder of A Crew Of Patches Theatre Company, a Shakespearean repertory based in Chicago. He has acted and done fight work for the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC, and First Folio Shakespeare, among many others.
As a writer, his Star-Cross’d series of novels place the characters of Shakespeare’s Italian plays in their historical setting, drawing in figures such as Dante, Giotto, and Petrarch to create an epic of warfare, intrigue, and romance. In Her Majesty’s Will, Shakespeare himself becomes a character as Blixt explores Shakespeare’s “Lost Years,” teaming the young Will with the dark and devious Kit Marlowe to hilarious effect. In the Colossus series, Blixt brings first-century Rome and Judea to life as he relates the fall of Jerusalem, the building of the Colosseum, and the coming of Christianity to Rome. And in his bestselling Nellie Bly series, he explores the amazing life and adventures of America’s premier undercover reporter.
David continues to write, act, and travel. He has ridden camels around the pyramids at Giza, been thrown out of the Vatican Museum and been blessed by John-Paul II, scaled the Roman ramp at Masada, crashed a hot-air balloon, leapt from cliffs on small Greek islands, dined with Counts and criminals, climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, and sat in the Prince’s chair in Verona’s palace. But David is happiest at his desk, weaving tales of brilliant people in dire and dramatic straits. Living with his wife and two children, David describes himself as “actor, author, father, husband - in reverse order.”
