For the character ask game: Cesare 😅❤️
character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS
ship with: I talked a little while ago about how I thought Cesare should have been in a romantic relationship with Leonardo da Vinci and I’ve only gotten more and more into idea since then. I just think it would have been thematically perfect, to watch them be each other’s muses as they pursue their own goals, both of them ultimately loyal only to their own minds/visions. Also, those two actors had a lot of chemistry and gave a lot of tension to their performances, you really felt like they understood each other and I just think it would have been perfect.
friendship them with: Alessandro. No exclamation point because I’m not even gonna bother pretending that I’m saying something controversial, this is just like... something everyone knows. These two friends complimented each other in terms of their arcs and they constantly challenged on another. They had sweet moments, sad moments, scary moments... what’s not to love?
general opinions: Cesare... I love him as a character, but trying to explain why I love him is complicated. He’s an extreme character to be sure, in every sense, I love how he can kind of inhabit the highest highs and the lowest lows at the same time. I think fundamentally to me, his character boils down to a singular question, “how do I become a legend?” And through the whole series, we’re watching him kind of... pursue that question and along the way he kind of goes on these little tangents “do I even want to be a legend?” or “what does it even mean to be a legend?” but he’s always motivated by this central goal of of being remembered and writing his name in the pages of history. I mean, this motivation was even present in the little things, one character detail that I LOVED was that they had Cesare paint his face in skull makeup in order to hide his syphilis scars, rather than wearing a mask which he disdains as “for the common man.” It’s made even more wonderful by the fact that Cesare Borgia historically did wear a mask, so we have this sort of commentary of the character commenting on the historical truth and going “No! I have to be even more dramatic than that!” because he’s trying to be a mythic figure, not necessarily a historical figure. Like this dude is trying so hard that it gets ridiculous at times, but that’s what makes it so wonderful!
We see him do so many things in pursuit of this goal, some of them truly great, some of them truly awful. But what was so great about his arc in Borgia to me is that it was only when he realized he had to stop trying to be great that he could truly ascend. “Be nothing, Cesare. Be no one. Disappear into the infinite.” That quote is so amazing to me because I think it is Cesare realizing that he has been so motivated by his own self-image that it’s prevented him from actually reaching his full potential. And then when he dies, the story allows him to “rise from the dead” and he is reborn as a myth. That’s what I think we’re seeing when we see all those cardinals gossiping about Cesare’s death, they’re speculating, inflating how many men he killed before he died, saying maybe he didn’t even die! We’re watching them “resurrect” Cesare by turning him into a legend. There was even a poster for s3 that had the tagline “End of a reign, birth of a myth” and that’s exactly how I’d describe it.
I know some people see the ending of Cesare in the Americas as literal, but to me it was always intensely metaphorical. It’s Cesare entering a new world, crossing over into legend. Remember when he talked about death being the final victory, about not being worthy of death yet? Yeah, it’s because death is what makes him immortal. IDK, I’m not saying his arc was perfect, like it had definitely had its flaws and questionable decisions, but I liked how complete it was and that it was sort of centered around these interesting questions about myth-making.