There are so many things we have today which were almost beyond imagination in the past. This has been particularly brought home to me this week as I'm making a few trips to our county town (more than 100 miles away), and because we lost the internet which brings home just home much we use it! Technology certainly has its benefits! In fact, looking around the room (and this is a comparatively old-fashioned room) as I'm writing this, there are so many things we take for granted which would simply not have existed even a couple of hundred years ago. You can, of course, discount anything which uses electricity and, more interestingly, all of the paperback books - of which there are hundreds - and none of the MDF bookcases either. There would have been no photographs, although there may well have been paintings and sketches of the people in them. But it's not just about taking away what is here now. It's also about what we have lost since then. Rooms needed lighting, and th...
This month being #HistFicMay has got me thinking about my closest-to-being-finished WIP, Poisoned Pilgrimage. As much as possible, I'm attempting to answer all the prompts based on this one and hoping that it might spur me on to actually write the last few chapters...
Alas, so far, time has been a rare commodity this May!
That being said, we did sit down this evening and watch the announcement of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV and listen (via the most appalling automatic translation software!) to his first address as pope. Whatever your religious beliefs, this was a moment for the history books. What happens during his tenure remains to be seen, but it was a deeply significant and spiritual moment to join people in every corner of the world and look forward in hope. While the commentary teams were discussing what the choice of Leo might represent, I was able to (with a small amount of smugness, I'm not going to lie!) impress Judith with my knowledge of the fact the Medici popes favoured the name Leo.
The Medici family feature heavily in Poisoned Pilgrimage, although it is a little while before their papal years. Piero "The Unfortunate" de Medici is one of the book's major players, but the pope at this time was the infamous Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It is between the artistry of Florence and the grandeur of Rome that Poisoned Pilgrimage is set, as the political rivalry plays out, not just between the two cities, but also between the Italian states and Spain.
Known predominantly for his nepotism and his shameless flouting of the church's rules, Alexander made as many enemies as he did friends, and his legacy is generally not regarded as a great one. At best, he was a family man, but he exhibited a shocking lack of humanitarian concern in the management of the newly discovered Americas, and was not adverse to using the individuals of his family for the advancement of the Borgias as a whole. But, as the history books show, his obsessive lust for ownership and power were to lead to the downfall of the Borgia family who, over the following century, faded into obscurity.
All that being said, there is very little evidence that Alexander stooped to the depths of which he is often accused, nor is it likely that Lucrezia went around poisoning people. And yet the jealous onlookers, frightened bystanders, and horrified members of the religious orders could hardly be blamed for watching the abuse of power Alexander exhibited and questioning just how he got away with it... A little bit like how many of us feel today about certain world leaders!
Although Alexander makes the perfect gangster-esque pope for books like mine, I'm sure - absolutely positive! - that Pope Leo XIV will not be like those Renaissance popes. There is something very reassuring about the return to the original role of pope of recent years. I wonder what books will be written about him in five hundred years time...
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