- Alonso Pimental: The guards gulp wine as fish gulp the sea, unaware its taste is polluted. They are already dead!
- Cesare Borgia: A priest who kills? You would thrive at the Vatican.
- [first lines]
- Alonso Pimental: And behold, an angel of the Lord next to him, and a light shone in the cell. The angel struck Peter on the side and woke him saying, get up,quickly. And the chains fell of Peter's wrists.
- Cesare Borgia: [posing for the painter] I am not Peter, I am Prometheus. I brought mankind fire. And for my generosity, I am shackled to a rock.
- Charlotte d'Albret: Our mother's sister who cares for us, uses the worst words when speaking of our murdered father, our Papal grandfather, and you.
- Cesare Borgia: Every ducket has two sides. No Borgia is perfect. Yet we have tried to make a difference.
- Jean d'Albret: Did our father... was he a good man.
- Cesare Borgia: Yes. Yes he was. And he would be filled with dulcet delight to see how handsome and beautiful you are. You must try, in the ever shifting tides of your life, to be better beings than your father, your grandfather, and me. Imitate you aunt Lucrezia.
- Charlotte d'Albret: I would like to meet her.
- Jean d'Albret: She sends us gifts on our birthdays, and our saints days.
- Cesare Borgia: I'm not surprised. She is God's grandest soul.
- Cesare Borgia: I cannot help but wonder, what if Juan had not been murdered. Would I have remained a Cardinal? What if Reginald Louis had not been murdered. Would he have been in Naples instead of de Cordoba and guaranteed my safe passage back to the Romania? What if a malarial fever had not plagued both father and son? If the reign of Pope Alexander had lasted another year? Or even six months, would I now be emperor of Italy? What if Lucrezia and I had consummated our love?
- Rodrigo Borgia: [as a dream] "What if" is a game for philosophers and school boys. You're neither.
- Cesare Borgia: Your father has sent you to surrender.
- Louis de Beaumont: No. I come to say that we are prepared to die, to the last man. Our souls and our swords.
- Cesare Borgia: Then you will die. Either bleeding on the walls, or more slowly, from the gnawing of hunger.
- Louis de Beaumont: I have read what they say about you. Now I see that you are even greater than your legend.
- Cesare Borgia: Legends be damned. We are here to serve a just cause.
- Louis de Beaumont: A warning. Viana is a strange place, where even extraordinary men are humbled...