5 Terrible Lies You've Been Told About Famous People
#2. The Murderous, Incestuous Borgia Family Was Probably Neither Murderous Nor Incestuous
Pope Alexander VI and his family, the Borgias, are historically renowned for the kind of cruelty, corruption, and depravity that makes them sound like they leaped wholesale out of George R. R. Martin's imagination. In fact, if you mixed Game Of Thrones with House Of Cards, you'd get The Borgias, the Showtime series featuring the ambitious pope (played by Jeremy Irons, chewing scenery) and his daughter Lucrezia, who spent much of her screen time having hot sex with her brother Cesare. Yeah, their real life was depraved enough that a telling of their story could only occur on pay cable.
Showtime
"Sadly, we got cancelled before we could introduce the zombie-banging subplot."
The Reality:
The historical Borgia family weren't exactly saints, but they weren't any worse than most of the other noble families of the time. The Catholic Church was a little bit less friendly in those days -- by which we mean that popes and cardinals back then almost all had to murder their way into the Vatican or be murdered themselves. It was a good day if you didn't have to stab anyone on your way to communion.
Juan Monino/iStock/Getty Images
The "this is my blood" thing began after one notably animated Sunday.
So why did the Borgias gain a reputation as being particularly evil? It might be as simple as the fact that they were foreign. The Borgias were Spanish, and almost every pope before Alexander was as Italian as marinara sauce. Simple old-timey prejudice was enough to grind the reputation of the Borgias into the dirt, while their equally ruthless and stabby rivals, the Medici family, wound up being rather highly regarded in the history books.
As for the long-standing rumor that Lucrezia was banging everyone in her immediate family, well, that can be chalked up to cheap revenge by a scorned ex-husband. See, in 1497, the pope decided that he wanted his daughter to marry someone more politically convenient than her current husband, Giovanni Sforza. But he needed a good reason to dissolve her marriage, so he annulled it on the basis of non-consummation, dubiously claiming that they hadn't had sex once in the four years they'd been married. Sforza was pissed off by the accusation that he was some kind of sexless limp-dick, so he spread the rumor that Alexander had dissolved the marriage so that he could have sex with his own daughter.
Bartolomeo Veneto
Then he probably nailed her nude woodcuts to the church's front door like the Martin Luther of revenge porn.
Since the Italian public already hated the filthy Spanish usurpers, the rumor mill cranked into overdrive. History books started reporting that Lucrezia was having sex with her father, her brother, and everyone else in the Vatican, most likely.
#1. Elizabeth Bathory, History's Most Prolific Serial Killer, May Have Been Innocent
via Wiki Commons
Countess Elizabeth Bathory is remembered as one of the greatest historical villains, a real-life monster who slaughtered her servants and bathed in their blood in order to preserve her youthful appearance, because that was the kind of thing that passed for scientific reasoning in the 16th Century. Many historians and non-historians -- such as, well, Cracked -- have suggested that she was the most prolific serial killer in recorded history, using her protected status to torture and murder somewhere in the neighborhood of 650 people.
Olivia Megalis/Moment Open/Getty Images
Great for closing pores and opening the gates of hell.
The Reality:
Now, we're not going to come right out and say we were wrong (we did admit that historians think that the 650 number has been trumped up a little over the past four centuries), but there is some contention about whether the real number is any higher than zero.
via Wiki Commons
So of everyone from the 1500s, she's possibly the least murderous.
See, Bathory was never actually put on trial -- just locked in a tower to be forgotten. (Which we know from Disney films was the most common form of medieval punishment.) All the evidence of her bloodthirsty crimes comes from accusations made against her by ... people who wanted her stuff and/or owed her a shit-ton of money.
For context, this all took place in 1500s Europe, where being a woman didn't exactly earn you much respect. Being a powerful, wealthy woman earned you downright resentment. Being a powerful, wealthy woman without a husband meant that the peasants were already sharpening their pitchforks, and we absolutely mean that literally. So it's kind of telling that all of the accusations against Bathory began to surface around the time her husband, Count Ferencz Nadasdy, died, leaving her in control of their entire fortune.
Andreas Schlegel/fStop/Getty Images
And the first crime that entered their heads was "stabbed a bunch of virgins."
It didn't help her that the King of Hungary, Matthias, owed Bathory a substantial amount of money. Now, King typically beats Countess in most hierarchies, so we're not sure how that happened (maybe he was really bad at poker), but when rumors began to emerge that Bathory was into some shady hobbies, he didn't hesitate to ask some other noblemen to investigate. And by "noblemen," we mean relatives of Bathory who stood to inherit her estate if something were to happen to her.
Unsurprisingly, the investigation uncovered "evidence" that Bathory was slaughtering people by the hundreds. And that she was a witch. This evidence, of course, took the form of eyewitness testimony delivered under torture. And Bathory's accusing family delivered said evidence, along with an offer the King couldn't refuse: get rid of Bathory, and they would cancel his debt in return for being allowed to divide her land among themselves.
Jacomoman78/Wiki Commons
She had a castle. You'd lie for a castle.
It's not enough to vindicate the "Blood Countess," but you have to admit that it does make you wonder whether we owe her an apology for centuries of comparing her to Dracula.
History is rife with dumb lies. Like maybe Paul Revere wasn't such an American hero. See what we mean in 5 Fictional Stories You Were Taught In History Class. And while we're on that subject, check out Revere's female equivalent you never heard of in 5 Important People Who Were Screwed Out Of History Books.
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