If there was one thing Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things: life, disillusionment, and death. In his father's case it was his wife Donna Isobel, and Donna Elvira who supplied the latter. Don Juan settled in Rome after attending the University of Pisa. Rome was run by the tyrannical Borgia family consisting of Caesar, Lucrezia, and the Count Donati. Juan has his way with and is pursued by many women, but it is the one that he could not have that haunts him. It will be for her that he suffers the wrath of Borgia for ignoring Lucrezia, then killing Count Donati in a duel. For Adriana, they will both be condemned to death in the prison on the river Tigre.