Some good, juicy stories linger on, no matter how false they are historically or how much evidence there is to refute them. Case in point:    Cesare Borgia was ruthless and had no qualms about assassinating people who opposed him. But his sister, Lucrezia, considered to be the most famous poisoner of all time, never poisoned anyone in her life. She was mainly a helpless pawn in her father's (Pope Alexander VI) and brother's political ploys. Once she got free of her family (married Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara, much too powerful for the Borgias to touch), she was a good and faithful wife to Alfonso, and a patron of the Arts.

Most of the libels about Lucrezia Borgia came from the Secretary of Venice, who loathed the Borgias and couldn't think up enough bad things to say about them, then a play by Victor Hugo, who got most of his information from the writings of the Secretary of Venice. A good, unbiased history of the Borgias was written by Rafael Sabatini, a rigorous historian, but best known for his historical novels (Captain Blood, Scaramouche, et al.).

Don Firth