Cesare Borgia was an Italian aristocrat, politician, and condottiero (mercenary leader) during the Renaissance. In the manga, Cesare's father Rodrigo Borgia, a Cardinal, sells his infant son's soul to the Devil as part of a deal that will one day make him Pope Alexander VI. Cesare is consequently shunned by his father, who is unable to see him as anything but an agent of darkness and reminder of his sin. Increasingly alienated, Cesare eventually comes to rely on the dark powers within himself. He becomes obsessed with the idea of conquest and is aided in his political machinations by the assassin Don Michelotto.