---

A dramatic tale of assassination, spying and betrayal in the opulent, cut-throat world of Renaissance Italy.

---

´A spectacular, elegant, brilliant portrait of skulduggery, murder and sex in Renaissance Florence´ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year

1531 - after years of brutal war and political intrigue, the bastard son of a Medici Duke and a ´half-negro´ maidservant rides into Florence. Within a year, he rules the city as its Prince. Backed by the Pope and his future father-in-law the Holy Roman Emperor, the nineteen-year-old Alessandro faces down bloody family rivalry and the scheming hostility of Italy´s oligarchs to reassert the Medicis´ faltering grip on the turbulent city-state. Six years later, as he awaits an adulterous liaison, he will be murdered by his cousin in another man´s bed.

´Nothing in sixteenth-century history is more astonishing´ Hilary Mantel

---

"A spectacular, elegant, brilliant portrait of skulduggery, murder and sex in Renaissance Florence" Simon Sebag Montefiore Evening Standard, Books of the Year

---

Catherine Fletcher is a historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe. In her previous book, The Black Prince of Florence, Hilary Mantel praised Catherine´s ´eye for the skewering detail [that] makes the citizens of renaissance Florence live again´. Catherine is Associate Professor in History and Heritage at Swansea University, the author of The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story from Inside the Vatican and broadcasts regularly for the BBC.

---