ABSTRACT
In the video games Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood game play is centered on one mission: defeating the Borgia and destroying their grip on sixteenth-century Rome. The game’s main character, Ezio Auditore, is tasked with destroying Borgia flags, razing Borgia “towers,” assassinating Borgia allies, and recruiting fellow enemies of the Borgia in a long build-up to the “boss fight” – a showdown with Cesare Borgia. Brotherhood was both a commercial and critical success winning industry awards and selling over 6.5 million copies in the first six months of its debut, thereby memorializing the Borgia for a generation of gamers and depicting their history for a new audience. This chapter interrogates this rendering of Rodrigo, and his children, Lucrezia and Cesare, and the meaning of their resurrection in this video game franchise. The central question explored is how depictions of the past in video games give historical events and personages a 3D afterlife.
