Longreads is an amazing place for long-form pieces, and one of my favorites is their Queens of Infamy series. Today’s installment made me hugely excited, as it’s all about Lucrezia Borgia.
I was first introduced to The Borgia family via the 2011 show on Starz starring Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander VI and Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia. While The Borgias certainly leaned into a lot of the (ahem) scandalous rumors surrounding Lucrezia, she was also shown to be smart, politically savvy, and poetic.
Queens of Infamy mixes history with writer Anne Thériault’s humor and this makes the reading time fly by, especially if you are already familiar with the subject matter. I highly recommend this read for all my armchair historians out there, if only for the breaks that feature script like scenes like these:
LUCREZIA: if you think this is the height of obscene Borgia parties, wait til you hear about the Banquet of the Chestnuts
LUCREZIA: it allegedly involved 50 courtesans crawling around naked
LUCREZIA: and prizes for the guests who had the most sex with the courtesans
LUCREZIA: while my father and I watched
LUCREZIA: I mean, it probably never happened but, you know
LUCREZIA: allegedly
(via Longreads, image: Starz)
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Denzel Washington saw a commotion in West Hollywood with cops and an unarmed distressed homeless man. He got out of his car and served as a barrier between the man and the police — helping to diffuse a tense situation. This man was arrested safely.🌎❤️ pic.twitter.com/4UyYdX1vT6
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) May 28, 2020
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- What is this?
Tomorrow is finally gonna be Friday.
![](https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/denzel.gif?resize=318%2C256)
(Warner Bros.)
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Published: May 28, 2020 06:00 pm