#florence.intro

The only surviving child of Giuliana and Cosimo de Bardi was placed into the wardship of the Medici family, after illness swept through the family residence and took many lives as payment for the vast riches which they possessed. As heiress to a large fortune, the control of Isabella was well sought after. Naturally, no one ever bothered to ask how she felt on the matter. All little Isa knew was that for the first three years of her life she had been made to feel like a princess, and then suddenly she was in a carriage being carted away from her home, surrounded by strangers. 

It could have been worse, but it wasn’t Utopia. Cosimo de Bardi had whispered to her every night that she was his golden jewel, and that no one would ever be as precious as her. But in the company of the Medici’s, there was no one to whisper to her how special she was. The result was pure resentment, she loathed her captors and longed to be free.

Isabella had always been intelligent, but she had an aptitude for dance and languages. It did not matter what challenge was place before her, she would crack the task sooner than anyone ever expected her to. Despite her charming nature, Isabella did not make friends frequently or urgently. She had always been a solitary creature, guarded to the world around her. All the childhood magic in her eyes had evaporated with the death of her parents.

Many proposals were sent her way, but it was the will of the Medici’s to choose who would be the bearer of her shackles. Isabella knew that she was trading one captive life for another. Lorenzo Bueri was an oafish man, round bellied and red cheeked, with a cruel temper and a preference for debauchery. She was to be his pretty little wife, young and sweet, with a fortune at her disposal. She loathed him. 

When his grip on her arm was too fierce, or he pulled himself away from one of his many whores to visit her bed chambers, Isabella silently cursed him. Stupid rutting pig! Even his laugh made her skin crawl, she was disgusted by him. Her lodgings with the Medici family did not see so vile, not compared to the marital home. One thing that greatly amused her was that despite his many lovers, he had never once sired a child, not even a bastard. He was not a man of virility. 

Without the burden of a child in his deplorable image, Isabella felt like there was still an opportunity for her to be free. She wanted to see him dead, so that he could no longer be a scourge upon the earth. There had always been a few individuals loyal to her, which came from the love they held for her parents. It did not take too much convincing for one to brandish a knife. She provided the details to the local brothel which he frequented, and her loyal friend cut open him like a skewered boar. 

Falsified shock stretched over her doe-eyes, when a messenger came with news of her husband’s death. It was only when the messenger had left that she had run to her chambers, locking them so the maids could not hear her laugh into her pillows. She was free! 

No one told Isabella that a young widower without an heir had no more freedom than a young maiden, and soon she was taken back into the care of the Medici’s. The ruling of the Bueri house went into the younger brother’s name, and once again her life was not her own. Funnily enough, it appeared as though she gained more attentions that she had as a prospective bride. 

Maddie is the youngest Salviati sibling, and she’s been able to get away with  p r e t t y  much anything, because she was a v cute kid. So long as she wasn’t causing a scandal, nobody cared tbh.

This was all innocent and cute, until she reached her teens and discovered a whole bunch of FUN places to hang out where ladies should absolutely not hang out i.e. taverns

She fell in love with A Young Man well below her station, and after some shenanigans she ended up pregnant. She hasn’t seen him since she found out.

BECAUSE Madalene freaked. She performed an abortion on herself with a hairpin, and was discovered in a pool of blood crying her eyes out by one of the maids.

The maid tidied her up, but the botched operation led to a really bad infection. Maddie was bedridden for months.

VERY VERY few people know what actually caused the illness, and DEFINITELY no-one outside of her House. It’s been kept very secret, for obvious reasons.

Her parents are still hoping for an advantageous marriage match for her, so Madalene cannot speak freely about all this. 

Eiravati’s parents had been married for a while before they finally managed to conceive a child. Eiravati was the only child the couple ever had.

Everything had to be PERFECT for her birth. Her father was a merchant, and they’d spent the last five years since their wedding saving up for a home outside of India. They chose a small village in northern Italy. 

Her father couldn’t be there for the actual birth.

This was a trend. Her father was away a lot during her childhood, although he kept his family well looked after. and when he came home it was with exciting gifts from foreign countries.

Eiravati’s mother was eager for her to marry above her station. This would’ve (I believe?) been harder for her in India.

She had a good education, packed with things her mother thought would make her more attractive to possible suitors- dancing, singing, musical instruments, foreign languages- even fencing. She was given a pony for her fourteenth birthday, and taught how to ride.

Despite all this preparation, it came as an enormous shock when the Pazzi family began to express an interest in marrying Eiravati to one of their boys. With her father at sea, she and her mother compiled a lie: he was a foreign dignitary, and that was why his work kept him away

Eiravati has told nobody that this wasn’t true. Even though her father has been dead for more than fifteen years

Eiravati’s the one who handles the financial affairs of House Pazzi for the most part. The house would probably crumble without her, although she lets her husband take the credit. 

She finds it hard to let loose and have fun, and will not do so unless around people she really trusts

When asked of his early life Lotario will say simply that he was born in the south to a military family, that he looked up to his father as a boy, to the point where he idolized him and put him up on a pedestal of who he wanted to be as an adult so when he came of age he left to join the military

All of that is true enough, though he leaves out the fact that his family never had the same love for him throughout his years at home, both because he was assigned female at birth and raised with the assumption that he was a girl so his aspirations and interests never made his parents happy and that he has hair follicles that are overly sensitive to androgen, meaning that even with the low levels of androgen that one would expect he’s been able to grow facial hair since puberty

Initially when Lotario ran away from home to join the military he thought of himself as simply being disguised as a man so he could have a role he would have never been allowed otherwise but as time went on he grew more and more aware that this was how he was most comfortable in general

As time went on he also grew more and more disillusioned with military life, realizing it was never what he had thought as a young boy, growing to hate it, and eventually he quit.

He had no idea what to do at that point, he could always return home, admit he was wrong and go about his life as it would have been as he never left but the idea of having to return home and spend the rest of his life pretending to be a woman was something he could hardly even think of doing

So he moved to Bologna to attend university with the help of a rich friend he had made while in service and figure out what it was he was to do with the rest of his life

He spent a few years there before he met a painter who took him on as an apprentice, teaching him everything he knew

It was two years ago now that he moved to Florence and the Pazzis became a patron of his and this is the happiest he’s ever been in his life, he feels he’s finally found exactly the life he wants

sooo, this is to be eternally under construction, but the baseline of rinaldi kinda goes like this: 

the frank underwood of renaissance italy, p much

ruthless and not misunderstood

inspired by BUT NOT IDENTICAL with the canon historical character

a mind bred into strategy, tinted with plenty illusions (or are they?) of grandeur, both about himself and his family’s ancestral history

super disdainful of those who recently came into means/into power - for him, the distinction between coinage and authority is very clear: only one can be grabbed from hazard, the other one is instilled in you with time, by a long line of succession which cannot be dismantled by earthly powers

totally into that status quo

cultured, but not very tolerant of everything the renaissance entails: think of him as a republican in both senses of the word lmao

has a ledger of mini-plots for all his family as if they were freaking tamagotchis and neopets

would sell a kidney and a kid for that street cred

even with all that, he still views his children as the best, regardless of any condition or circumstance, simply because they are albizzis

has gone very far with simony and nepotism and is now in the backpocket of a high-order clerical member, who can all but have him excommunicated if his private dealings with the curia are aired out

possible connections:

familial - he does already have daughters, a son, and a ward, but in such an illustrious, golden-lettered family there can be many more members: distant cousins he took under his wing, men whose potential he had glimpsed as a member of the signoria and wishes to mentor them as a consequence etc.

matters of the heart - depending on where my muse runs off to, as it’s completely known to do, I think I might headcanon him as loyal to his wife. why, you ask, when adultery is so much fun? well, bear with me: I got very tired of this trope that the moment a man is in a position of power, it’s half-assumed that he toys around with women, often indiscriminately so. I don’t think it’s true to boot at all, and can be actually very toxic to development if used without discernment! 

rivals: bloody medici vermin. i’ll say no more. even though is not a tyrant, and well aware it doesn’t pay to hold more grudges than you can appease, he would not look kindly on those who support/brush on the medici entourage. even artists and men of letters could gain his disapproval by putting on display the same loose, tactless behavior he sees as vulgarity without cause. maybe your muse could try to enlighten him?

Hi guys Beau here!  First, super excited to be here and to bring along with me for the ride this beautiful bean right here. So let me introduce her to you shall I!

 - Born on November 13, 1414. The eldest of four daughter of a merchant in Ethiopia, Eshe Senai  took on the task of learning the family business. It was an unpopular and uncommon thing to have a female help in matters of business. However, Eshe showed a true affinity in the trade and commerce. So much so, that their family business profited under her help and keen eye for trade. 

-It was her keen eye that caught the attention of the Head of the Pazzi family at the time. He and her father became good friends in both business dealings and family affairs.  Her father made an arrangement for Eshe to become a ward of the Pazzi house. In the hopes of finding her a good match and in turn she could help facilitate a good match for her sisters in the future. So, with a tearful goodbye to her family Eshe left with the Pazzi family to Florence. 

-Life in Florence was very different from the life that she had lived in Ethiopia. One that took Eshe sometime to get use to. There was no room for women in the world of commerce, even young woman as smart as Eshe. That didn’t stop her, she watched, she observed she listen to Papa Pazzi as he taught his son, made deals with other men and their families. Eshe blended in when she need to, and took informations and knowledge whenever she could. Her free-spited  nature caught the eye of a young Medici man not to long after her arrival.

-It was a friendship that blossomed quickly, even thought Eshe knew that that Medici were no friend to the Pazzi she continued to meet with the young man almost every day. A romance soon followed and Eshe thought that maybe she had found her match. He was intelligent, handsome, kind and a dozen of other attributes that she had looked for in a man. It was something that would not come to pass. Eshe saw less and less of the man as the years went on until he finally stopped stopped meeting with her. Ignoring her all together when he saw her in the market or at public functions. It was to her great surprise and displeasure she found that he had entered into a marriage in that span of time. 

-It would  be a year later at the age of 19 when she would marry her husband. She adopted the Italian name Gianna ( because it was likely to help her husband when it came to business if she had an Italian first name.) He was a good man, that she didn’t love upon their first few years of marriage and the brith of their first three children. However, as time went on. Eshe now Gianna learned to accept the things that she could not change about her life or her marriage and started to appreciate her husband and his work ethic. That appreciation turned to admiration, that turned to a fondness and that blossomed into love. It is that love for him and her family that drives her.

Possible Connections:

First Lover ( a Medici male) : This was to young man she feel in love with in her early teenage years. They had great ideas on how they would change the world, and that it didn’t matter who he was or who she was. Very young, and idealistic at the time ( as first loves tend to be). After he marriage and her own, she kept her distance making sure to avoid the sight of him at all possible. As angry as she is about how things dissolved… she might still have a soft spot for him. 

Siblings ( Three Sisters) : Her father often joked that it was his lot in life to b surrounded by beautiful woman. He was indeed, having helped raised four very different daughters. Gianna’s younger siblings have all been married off but high influential men of Italy. The matches found by Gianna herself to help them find a place in this world. Gianna and the youngest ( should be in her mid thirties ) are very close while the other two sister ( early to mid forties) don’t often see eye to eye on many things. 

Enemies (Male and Female): You don’t get grow up as a ward in a well to do house and then marry into a high ranking house with out making a few enemies. Gianna knows how the games work and she is willing to do what she needs to to protect her family and those living under her roof. Whether these enemies find out that she had uncovered some private information or they just wish to see the fall of the Salviati household makes no difference. Gianna learned to always be prepared for war.

Informant ( Male or Female): Gianna is aware that knowledge is power. To make it in Florence, secrets were the currency of choice for those of the wealthy echelon. It was a lesson she learned early on when arriving to the city all those years ago. This person, is Gianna’s personal informant.  Gather secrets and making sure that the ones that she wants hidden stay that way- by any means necessary. With the exception of her close friends in the Pazzi household, she trust the information given to her by this person and makes sure that they can not be bought off. ( platonic/ flirtatious )

  Bee again! My other baby, Madonna Giulia delgi Albizzi whom holds her family and their values incredibly close to her heart.

Giulia is very much her father’s daughter, as a young girl she always wanted to be wandering about in Rinaldi’s footsteps or working on her Latin at the end of his desk whilst he works. She doesn’t see eye to eye with him on all things but she does wish to please him in life and to see the family prosper with her aid.

Given her sex she has very little power in terms of decision making, her own freedom and certainly no say in the politics in the republic, but that only gives her further drive to have her hand in the cookie jar in one way or another.

Previously, Giulia has tried her hand as delving into the political side of Florence, using her charm and coin purse to draw those with influence onto side and it has been somewhat successful. Whenever a member of the Albizzi family finds themselves in the Signoria she finds out whom holds influence upon their opponent and keeps them close but their purses even closer.