Marozia di Roma.
... Marozia was lover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother of popes. She forged an empire with little more than her wiles and her thighs, and her descendants would rule Rome for centuries, making and breaking popes, and influencing the politics and history of the Western world.
... Her father was a crony of Pope Sergius III and quite possibly the most powerful man in Rome. Luitprand of Cremona says that “from her early youth, [Marozia] had been inflamed by the fires of Venus”; Marozia set her sights on none other than the pope himself. She flashed him her tits, and soon Sergius III was shacked up with her in happily unwedded bliss. Marozia gave birth to a son, Giovanni, who was widely believed to have been fathered by Sergius III1.
Sergius III, who was probably about the same age as Marozia’s father, died in 911. Marozia’s parents married her off to a soldier-of-fortune, Alberico, who a few years earlier had killed the duke of Spoleto and usurped his lands and title. He was immensely powerful and just as ambitious as Marozia2 and together they had a small pack of children.
...
Marozia and Alberico schemed to take more power for themselves. They got on the bad side of Pope John X, who drove Alberico from the city, and shortly afterward Alberico was murdered by Romans who suspected him of conspiring with the Hungarians. Pope John X forced Marozia to look at the mutilated body of her husband and take heed; that just seems to have pissed her off.
Marozia turned right around and married Guido of Tuscany in 925. They moved against Pope John X, seized him and threw him into prison, where he was then smothered. Marozia then hand-picked a couple of guys to be pope for the next couple of years until her own son, Giovanni, was old enough to put on the funny hat and become Pope John XI3.
Her husband Guido having died in 929, and with Marozia not content with merely being a dowager duchess, a dowager marchesa, and the mother of the pope, she decided to go for broke and become queen of Italy. She became engaged to King Hugo of Italy, a marriage that was technically illegal since his half-brother was her deceased second husband, Guido. But that’s what having a pope in the family is good for.
Pope John XI presided over his mother’s wedding in 932 at the Castel Sant’Angelo, but the celebrations were marred by a conflict between Hugo and Marozia’s teenage son, Alberico II 4. During the ceremony, Alberico was holding a bowl of water for Hugo to wash his hands, but spilled a little of it. Hugo slapped him in the face and called him “clumsy”, and the offended Alberico fled the wedding and incited a riot in the streets. ...
[et cetera]
