MovieChat Forums > The Borgias (2011) Discussion > The non-aging of Giovanni Borgia

The non-aging of Giovanni Borgia

posted 9 years ago by rafaelyamano
4 replies | jump to latest

So did it bother anyone else that Giovanni Borgia (Lucrezia’s son with the stablebloy Paolo in the TV show) never got older as time passed? According to the show itself and history, Rodrigo becomes Pope in 1492. The first season shows Spanish conquistadores returning and presenting christianized Tainos to him. One conquistador even joins Juan’s army in season 2.

So, the French invasion of Italy led by Charless VIII happens in 1494, and is shown in season 1. So, two years pass in season 1, at least. The French invasion is repelled in the battle of Fornovo, 1495, which is shown in season 2 (that’s when the Pope sleeps for the second time with the mad Gonzaga duchess). By the end of season 1, Giovanni Sforza is born. I don’t care that his uncle Juan is all too alive (in history Giovanni was named after Juan as a way to honor his death), I can understand the liberty taken due to dramatic purposes.

What I can’t understand is how, at the end of season 3, when Lucrezia has fled Naples after being married to Alfonso d’Aragon (1498), after the jubilee (1500) and all that, the kid is still an infant! He still sleeps in a cradle, he still has to be carried and so on. I mean, something between 4 and 5 years have passed since the child was born and he’s still an infant. Why no ageing the child to show how much time passed? And if the show changed the dates of the previous battles/invasion of Naples (like, postponing them to 1497 or something) this still wouldn’t make sense, since Lucrezia has a lot of dialogue in the first season saying how strange it is for her father to be the pope, etc. If four/five years had passed since her father had been elected pope, she wouldn’t remark how any of that would be strange.

Really, it just seems to me they forgot that they had to age the kid as the seasons went on. I mean, the Borgia papacy lasted 11 years. If 4 seasons were to encompass the whole story, it wouldn’t be 1 season=1 year, so they should’ve known some people would have to be recast, like the child actors.

[–] eugenia_katze 9 years ago

What I can’t understand is how, at the end of season 3, when Lucrezia has fled Naples after being married to Alfonso d’Aragon (1498), after the jubilee (1500) and all that, the kid is still an infant!

I don’t know. Perhaps they thought that if Lucrezia’s son is still a helpless infant her irrational and stubborn desire to take him to Naples in S3 would look more understandable and sympathetic for viewers? Because in terms of history it makes no sense – noble ladies leaving their children by previous marriages under the care of guardians before a next wedlock were absolutely common those days. Historical Giovanni Borgia could live in Ferrara with Lucrezia only because officially he was Rodrigo’s son by “some unknown married woman”, and always called Lucrezia his sister. But Rodrigo of Aragon, for example, was never allowed to join his mother - even though he was a legitimate son of the Duke of Bisceglie, not a bastard child of a poor stable-boy. So the show’s Lucrezia playing a sort of modern feminist and loudly insisting on taking Giovanni with her, and even planning to kill the king of Naples for he refused her wish was actually just stupid. And very different from the real Lucrezia’s behaviour, too.

That never aging baby was involved into some of the show’s most silly and incredible plot-lines, anyway. Like, at the end of S1 they managed to divorce Lucrezia under the pretext of Giovanni Sforza’s impotence, and in the next season the supposed “virgin” repeatedly appears with her bastard child in public, and no one around, including her many suitors, ever cares. While in history the Borgias created such a messed up mystery around Giovanni Borgia’s parentage that it’s still uncertain now if the Giovanni’s mother was actually Lucrezia, let alone the boy’s father!

Again, in one of the first eps of S2 Rodrigo suggests Lucrezia to take a wet nurse saying it’s unsuitable for her to breast-feed Giovanni by herself, which really makes sense. However, right in the next ep Lucrezia refuses to feed the baby, and the pope and everyone else is acting as if it were a disaster and they never ever heard of any wet nurses. Ridiculous.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] everhazel1679 8 years ago

If you look closely Gio did get bigger, in episode 8 s3 his legs reach Lucrezia's waist and she makes a comment saying "he will need a bigger cot" to Cesare in a joking manner then directed at Alfonso. But yes, he should be at least 6 or 7 at the end. He's more like 3 or 4. Lazy production team that couldn't be bothered recasting haha.

[–] theocanada 8 years ago

YES! Watching this show on Netflix and continually annoyed by this. Years have gone by and the baby is still an infant. No idea what they could possibly be thinking.