[2] In 1463, when Alfonso was fifteen, his maternal great uncle Giovanni Antonio del Balzo Orsini, Prince of Taranto, died, and he obtained some lands from the inheritance.

[1] His tutor between 1468 and 1475 was the humanist Giovanni Pontano, whose De principe describes the proper virtues and manner of life becoming to a prince; the work took the form of letter of advice to the twenty-year old Alfonso, then Duke of Calabria, in 1468.

Alfonso had shown himself a skilled and determined soldier, helping his father in the suppression of the conspiracy of the barons (1485) and in the defense of the Kingdom's territory against the Papal claims.

[4] Instigated by Lodovico Sforza, who wished to stir up trouble to allow him to seize power in Milan, and with papal support, Charles decided to reassert the Angevin claim to Naples.

[9] However, he was greatly feared and hated by the Neapolitan people for his "most cruel insults and offenses", for the most heinous crimes, such as "violating virgins, taking other women for his pleasure", and practicing the "detestable and abominable vice of sodomy.

"[10] For example, the anonymous author of the Chronicum venetum - but it should be remembered that the Venetians were sworn enemies of the Neapolitans and of the Aragonese in particular - wrote that "wanting to narrate the tyranny, cruelty, lustful and dishonest appetites, betrayals, assassinations, and murders of King Ferrante and of Alfonso d'Aragona, his eldest son, Duke of Calabria, father of betrayals, conservative of rebels, a great book would not be enough for me: I believe that Nero was a saint among these tyrants.

[13] It was no coincidence that, when the situation of the kingdom became desperate, Alfonso decided to abdicate in favor of his son, since he was so hated for his vices and cruelty as Ferrandino loved for his virtues and justice.

The Successi tragici et amorosi, by Silvio Ascanio Corona, is a seventeenth-century collection of novels revealing the purported secrets of the Aragonese court of Naples.

As soon as his mother – a very chaste and very religious woman – had a hint of the relationship, she married Isabella to Giovan Battista Rota, a nobleman very fond of the Aragonese faction, and thus separated her from Alfonso.

Alfonso had her kidnapped and, for several days, abused her at will until her father Muzio Caracciolo and husband Riccardo persuaded King Ferrante to make his son release her.

[15] Poggio Reale, which Giorgio Vasari said was designed by Giuliano da Maiano and was laid out in the 1480s, has utterly disappeared and no extensive description has survived.

"[16] There are no archives to connect Giuliano or his brother Benedetto with the project; for documentation only a section and plan, reproduced with apologies for its inaccuracy, by Sebastiano Serlio.

It is clear that the Aragonese court at Naples introduced the Moorish garden traditions of Valencia, with its shaded avenues and baths, sophisticated hydraulics that powered splendid waterworks,[18] formal tanks, fishponds and fountains, as a luxurious and secluded setting for court life, and combined them with Roman features: Alfonso's Poggio Reale was built around three sides of an arcaded courtyard with tiers of seating round a sunken centre that could be flooded for water spectacles; on the fourth side it opened onto a garden that framed a spectacular view of Vesuvius.

It was all unlike anything experienced by the French king, who retreated from Italy, loaded with tapestries and works of art, and filled with building and gardening ambitions, but he would die young only three years later.

In the European series Borgia written by Tom Fontana, where he is played by Raimund Wallisch, his portrayal is more historically accurate in terms of his age and Sancia being his daughter.