The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis

I really loved this book.  It was a very interesting, yet sad story, based on true events in 1400's  Italy.

It involved the famous european families, the Borgias and the Aragons.  Princess Sancha is the illegitimate daughter of the King of Naples, a cruel, cowardly, and later insane ruler.  He marries Sancha off to the illegitimate son of the Pope to better the King of Naples position and sends the couple away so that Sancha can not have what she wants most, to be near her beloved brother.

The Pope later requests his son to come live in Rome with his bride.  Sancha only thought she knew cruelty.  The Borgias are so crude and cruel it is simply amazing that no one tries to kill them on a daily basis.  The stories involving the Pope's cruelty and that of his son's is even more fantastic than the stories of Henry VIII.

Sancha is very brave and stubborn for a girl of her time.  This is most difficult when she is married off to a young boy and when she must live with a jealous sister in law and a lecherous father in law and brothers in law.  She manages to make it all work for he until the Borgias take from her what she values most.

I was not as impressed by this author in an earlier book because it the earlier book there was more fantasy based on little facts of the time.  Kalogridis spent more time in the first book I read describing sex scenes but in this story she weaves an amazing story around known events describing sex scenes but not developing the book around the sex scenes.  It felt more like how the events could have actually played out rather than a pornographic novel.

It never ceases to amaze me how ridiculosly cruel and greedy royalty and those surrounding royalty were in the early days.  It sounds like what it must be like in Washington.....