Plotting, love, jealousy, rivalry and, most of all, power: those who held it, as well as those who wished for it, were ready – in a Renaissance Court – to sacrifice any affection, friendship and feeling to it. One of the major Italian Signorie, the Este’s; one of the most shining and elegant courts of the Renaissance, Ferrara; a very close couple, made up by Ercole d’Este and Eleonora of Aragon; six legitimate and two illegitimate children, grown together and raised following the most refined humanist principles. Despite this, in 1505, one of them, Giulio, lover of beautiful Angela Borgia, got blinded by order of one of his brothers, Cardinal Ippolito, who loved the same woman. And the following year, Giulio himself is sentenced to life in prison with Ferrante – another of the Este siblings – for trying to assassinate Alfonso, their older brother, who ruled the Duchy with Cardinal Ippolito. An iconic familiar and political drama of the Italian Renaissance, analysed with academic rigour and told with a writer's flair.

Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur is a former professor of the University of Florence and of the "Roma Tre" University in Rome and one of the main experts of political history of Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance.