Macchiavelli’s Duke

Machiavelli supposedly wrote Il Principe for Lorenzo II de Medici, the duke of Urbino, on how to unite Italy. And the French certainly had plans for Lorenzo di Piero, namely using him as a cat’s paw for their gambit on Naples. They married him to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, a cousin of the French king, in the hopes that the duke and the duchess would make happy little half-French babies. Well, they made one – Caterina Romola de Medici – before they died. Now, Madeleine died first, but let’s assume Lorenzo pulls through (I think they died of the plague, but some sources posit smallpox or some other disease). What does the future hold for the duke of Urbino?
 
If you wrote other parts, then please post them. I am always inclined to promote Italian TLs when possible. Besides this attempt intrigues me considering my attempt as well to write a Medici-leaded Italy as well and in hiatus since April (shame on me). Your POD besides is different from mine so there shouldn't be problems of similarities.
 
I was just thinking on the effects that it might have on the Italian future in general, rather than considering writing a fully fledged TL. I saw one once where Lorenzo survived and remarried (I think to a Bourbon princess) and his children of his second marriage married into a surviving house of Trastamara-Naples. And somewhere else Caterina de Medici ended as queen of Naples rather than consort of France (Which she lost out to Mary I Tudor).
 
err that's a myth. Macchiavelli hated the medicis. The prince was originally written as a satire aimed at criticizing people like the Medici's the reason is because I believe the Medici's broke his arm and caused him lots of hardships I think that he despised them.
 
Machiavelli hated the Medici clan, but hated the idea of bad things happening to Florence even more. Democratic rule > Medici autocracy > wars tearing Florence apart.

Anyway, a unified Medici-led Italy would be an interesting thing to figure out in a timeline. Easiest way to do it: give Leo X or someone of that generation a bastard son who'd be strong enough to be a long-serving pope after Paul III, and simultaneously change a few battles to screw the Habsburg clan just enough to make it hard for them to maintain control over most of Italy.

Bear in mind, such an Italy would be a terrible place to live in. But it would be united.

(Shameless self-promotion: my TL has most of Italy unify in the 16c under the Papal States, though not the Medici clan, and then disintegrate again at the beginning of the 17c. Said disintegration is basically an unalloyed good for Italy, esp. Rome, which no longer provides enough income to be worth papal simony.)
 
err that's a myth. Macchiavelli hated the medicis. The prince was originally written as a satire aimed at criticizing people like the Medici's the reason is because I believe the Medici's broke his arm and caused him lots of hardships I think that he despised them.

The idea that The Prince is a satire shows a complete lack of awareness of any of Machiavelli's other works and really is a tired old rag thrown up by people too enamoured with the modern connotations of the term Machiavellian to actually read his stuff.

Machiavelli was a dedicated Republican and his commitment to the restoration of civic virtue can be seen in his History of Florence and his Discourses on Livy. However, his premise was that in order to be free, a state had to be virtuous. Florence, at the time of his writing, was degenerate, as he saw it and thus couldn't sustain a republican government.

The Prince is written as a polemic to be read alongside his Discourses. In those he says that in times of crisis, a Prince is morally obliged to take control of a state, rule it autocratically and firmly in order to restore broken institutions and set the state once more on the path of virtue. The Prince is his guide to do this.

Machiavelli didn't have good relations with the Medici-upon their return to Florence they had him tortured and exiled from the city itself. But he eventually reconciled himself to them because he saw Florence's failure as a republic as proving his point-that a degenerate city cannot have a republican government and must have a strong leader. He saw the Medici as the best hope of Florence having this. Compare them to the alternatives: the Papal States, France, etc. and then read what he says about states being taken over by foreign powers and you see that he supports the Medici because they're Florentines, and the best Florence has to offer.
 
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