Renaissance Rivals
Sequel to Leonardo's Swans
by Karen Essex
Renaissance Rivals, the long-awaited sequel to the global bestseller Leonardo’s Swans, brings to life the brutal rivalry between two of history’s most fascinating women: Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, celebrated in her own lifetime as “The First Lady of the World,” and Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of the infamous Pope Alexander VI and one of the most maligned women in history.
Before the doomed duchess of Maggie O'Farrel's The Marriage Portrait, there were women who built the courts, forged the alliances, and turned power into art. Renaissance Rivals invites readers to step back one generation into the glittering, dangerous world that shaped the Italy of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Niccolò Machiavelli.
Pitted against each other by the ruthless political landscape and by the men they loved, Isabella and Lucrezia must learn how to survive in a world where women are treated as prizes, pawns, and weapons. Their battle is intimate, brilliant, and borders on the fatal, a war fought with jewels, letters, seduction, betrayal, and the strategic intelligence of women who refuse to disappear.
Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia:
The Women at the Heart of Renaissance Rivals
The Women at the Heart of Renaissance Rivals
by Karen Essex
The two central women in Renaissance Rivals could hardly have entered the historical record with more different reputations.
Isabella d’Este was celebrated as the First Lady of the Renaissance: cultured, disciplined, politically astute, and determined to shape how history would remember her. Lucrezia Borgia was remembered as something darker: poisoner, seductress, schemer, daughter of a corrupt pope, and sister to the dreaded Cesare Borgia.
One woman was praised as a model of refinement. The other was turned into a legend of depravity. The truth, as I discovered, was far more interesting and complicated.
I first became fascinated by Isabella while researching the prequel to Renaissance Rivals, Leonardo’s Swans, my novel about Isabella and her younger sister, Beatrice d’Este. Both were born into the ruling family of Ferrara and married into powerful courts in northern Italy. Beatrice became Duchess of Milan. Isabella became Marchesa of Mantua and one of the most influential women of her age.
When I finished Leonardo’s Swans, I could not let Isabella go. She was brilliant, ambitious, controlling, vulnerable, artistically gifted, and relentlessly conscious of rank. She collected antiquities and commissioned works from Leonardo, Titian, Raphael, and other great artists. Her clothing was copied across Europe. Venetian dollmakers even created Isabella dolls that circulated through the courts so other women could see what she was wearing.
We might call her the first Barbie. But Isabella understood that beauty, fashion, ceremony, patronage, and access were not trivial matters. They were forms of political language, forms of power.
Isabella’s deepest motivation was to secure a place for herself in a world where women rarely received power in their own names. She wanted influence, cultural immortality, political authority, and recognition equal to her abilities. She wanted the city-state of Mantua to matter. She wanted her children to prosper. She wanted artists and rulers to seek her favor. She wanted to become indispensable.
She also wanted to win.
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| Titian's Portrait of Isabella d'Este. Public domain. |
That hunger had been present since childhood. Isabella had grown up in competition with her beautiful younger sister, Beatrice, and learned early that affection, attention, marriage, and status could all become contests.
By the time Renaissance Rivals begins, Isabella is no longer a young woman struggling to define herself. She has built a reputation, cultivated power, and earned admiration throughout Europe.
Then Lucrezia Borgia enters her family when she marries Isabella’s brother, Alfonso d’Este, heir to the duchy of Ferrara. The marriage makes the two women sisters-in-law and brings Lucrezia directly into the Este court.
Initially, Isabella has every reason to dismiss her. Lucrezia is the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, whose papacy has become synonymous with corruption and scandal. Her brother Cesare is feared across Italy as an unwelcome conqueror. Her first marriage was annulled when it ceased to suit her family’s political needs. Her second husband was murdered. Rumors of incest, adultery, and poison clung to her name.
Yet Lucrezia’s true character does not fit the legend. She had been used as an instrument of her family’s ambition since childhood. Her marriages were arranged and then destroyed by men seeking power. Her reputation was written by enemies, gossips, and chroniclers eager for a sensational story. Therefore, in Renaissance Rivals, her central motivation is survival.
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| Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto, traditionally presumed to be Lucrezia Borgia. Public domain. |
Lucrezia wants safety, dignity, love, and the chance to create a life beyond the Borgias. She wants to become more than her father’s daughter and her brother’s pawn. She wants to prove herself worthy of Ferrara and to secure the future of her children. She also wants freedom from the monstrous identity others have assigned her.
Once established in Ferrara, Lucrezia became a patron of artists and poets, a charitable duchess, a capable administrator, and a woman trusted to govern during her husband’s absences. She handled petitions, manages property, corresponds with political figures, and gradually won the loyalty of people who had opposed her marriage.
The supposed monster proves alarmingly competent, every bit as competent as Isabella herself. And this is where the true conflict begins. Isabella sees herself as the natural center of the Este family. She is the dynasty’s brilliant daughter, raised within its traditions and devoted to preserving its prestige. Lucrezia is the outsider who marries into that dynasty and begins to command attention, affection, and influence.
Each woman represents a threat to the other. Isabella has lineage, beauty, education, prestige, and a lifetime of political training. Lucrezia has youth, beauty, papal wealth, notoriety, and an extraordinary instinct for survival.
Isabella has spent years building the image of the perfect Renaissance princess. Lucrezia arrives already famous.
Their rivalry is personal, political, and cultural. They compete for precedence within the Este family, influence over Alfonso, admiration at court, alliances, jewels, fashions, patronage, and public attention.
In the Renaissance, these matters weren’t merely decorative. A gown could announce rank. A jewel could signal allegiance. The order in which two women entered a room could become a political statement. An invitation withheld or a gift delayed might communicate hostility as clearly as a declaration of war.
Their similarities deepen the conflict. In the novel, both women have been shaped by dynastic ambition, understanding that their security depends upon marriage, fertility, family loyalty, and male favor. Both are intelligent enough to recognize the limits imposed upon them and resourceful enough to work around those limits.
Both brilliantly use letters as instruments of power. Their surviving correspondence reveals worlds of negotiation, persuasion, resentment, affection, calculation, and urgency. A letter might request a favor, conceal an insult, cultivate an ally, protect a child, defend a reputation, or influence a ruler. For both women, words are among their most effective weapons.
So are their relationships with men. One of the most painful challenges Isabella faces involves her husband, Francesco Gonzaga. The surviving letters between Francesco and Lucrezia reveal an intimacy and emotional charge that is difficult to dismiss.
For Isabella, Lucrezia’s hold over Francesco is more than a romantic threat. It challenges her dignity, marriage, and public authority. For Lucrezia, the relationship may offer affection, protection, revenge, political leverage, or all of these at once.
That ambiguity became crucial to the novel. I did not want Isabella to be the noble heroine and Lucrezia the wicked intruder. History had already simplified them too thoroughly.
Yes, Isabella’s ambition could make her ruthless. Her intelligence could become arrogance. Her need for control could wound the people closest to her. But Lucrezia’s vulnerability does not make her passive. She has learned to conceal her intentions, protect herself, and use the fascination she inspires. Survival has sharpened her.
Each woman possesses qualities the other lacks, and each understands the other’s power. Each sees the other as an obstacle to the life she believes she deserves.
Their greatest challenge is not simply defeating one another. It is surviving a world in which women are traded through marriage, used for their fertility, punished for ambition, and remembered according to stories written by men.
Renaissance Rivals unfolds amid war, papal intrigue, dynastic marriages, artistic brilliance, and the dangerous magnificence of the Italian courts. Its heroines fight with the weapons available to them: letters, jewels, clothing, gossip, pregnancy, patronage, alliances, and the affections of powerful men.
Yet beneath the rivalry lies a more intimate struggle. Isabella is trying to become unforgettable. Lucrezia is trying to escape what the world already believes about her.
Both are determined to author their own lives. That determination brings them into conflict. It also makes them formidable rivals.
Karen Essex
Karen Essex is the national and international bestselling author of Run, Darling, Kleopatra, Pharaoh, Leonardo's Swans, Stealing Athena, Dracula in Love, and Bettie Page: Life of a PinUp Legend.
All feature iconic women—powerful women that seduced the world and ruled it. Essex is also an active screenwriter and speaker, and an award-winning journalist.
She divides her time between Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Europe. Her novels are published in twenty-nine languages.
Leonardo’s Swans, the prequel to Renaissance Rivals, was a runaway bestseller in Italy and won the prestigious Premio Roma for Foreign Fiction.
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LinkTree • Website • Twitter / X • Facebook • Instagram
Pinterest • BookBub • TikTok
Amazon Author Page • Substack • Goodreads
