Lucrezia emerges as a political realist who participated with her father and brother in a campaign to marry into the powerful Este family, winning the affections of her new husband, Alfonso d'Este, later Duke of Ferrara. Bradford discredits the popular belief that Lucrezia helped Cesare assassinate her second husband. Drawing on extensive archival evidence, Bradford (Disraeli Princess Grace) explains how Lucrezia's first husband, after their marriage was annulled, vengefully tarnished her name with accusations of incest. The facts of Lucrezia's case are sorted out from fiction by Bradford's humanizing biography, which presents Lucrezia as an intelligent noblewoman, powerless to defy her family's patriarchal order, yet an enlightened ruler in her own right as Duchess of Ferrara. Lucrezia Borgia is legendary as the archetypal villainess who carried out the poisoning plotted by her scheming father Pope Alexander VI, aka Rodrigo Borgia and by her ruthlessly ambitious brother Cesare.
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