The Cenci

The torture of Beatrice Cenci at the hands of the authorities of Rome is given in brutal and clinical detail, sparing nothing. In this, the second of the series, Dumas tells the frankly horrifying story of the tragic sons and daughters of Francesco Cenci. Francesco Cenci hated them all with extraordinary cruelty and exploited them all diabolically; in particular, he sexually exploited his two daughters, especially Beatrice, both at the same time and often in the same bed as his wife Lucrezia, no relation to the famous Borgia princess of the same name. When, finally, his family turned on him and had him murdered, it looked for a while as though they might get away with it, but their fortunes were not that fortunate. The authorities, from Pope Clement VI on down, took bloody and terrible vengeance upon them. In what is arguably the first battered-woman defense, the crimes of the father meant nothing; the crimes of the women, everything.