While reading this book, I was most struck by the "wicked queen" character and her brother. These two characters are supposedly of the Borgia family, and I felt that their twisted, sick family dynamics were too much of a focus in the book and probably not representative of this historical family. It just so happened that I finished the book on my first night of a week in Rome and the next day, I found myself in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican. Okay, so maybe the focus on the sick, twisted side of the family was justified after all! Wow!