Casanova and Real Fake Magic
This is a little bit of bonus material for people who’ve read The Rose and the Mask: A Beauty and the Beast Retelling or The Murano Glass Slipper: A Cinderella Retelling, my fairytale retellings set in 18th Century Venice. I hope it’s interesting!
Both those books feature Giacomo Casanova. He’s the brother of Faustina, the heroine of The Rose and the Mask, and goes on to feature prominently in The Murano Glass Slipper. What I discovered, while writing the first one, is that not everyone knows that Giacomo Casanova really existed. Actually, quite a lot of people don’t know this, so please don’t feel bad if you didn’t, either! I feel as though I’ve always known, but I’m not really sure how. It’s not like there was a “Libertines Through History” textbook at my school or anything (although I think we would have studied the heck out of it if there had been, just saying). Most people are familiar with the word “casanova", but some people apparently think it refers to a mythical figure and, to others, it’s just a word.
He was a real person, though—one who became famous for his affairs. Here’s his autobiography and, if you don’t have time for that, I thoroughly recommend his Wikipedia page. It’s got everything: sex (obviously), spying, elaborate pasta-based escape plans, you name it.
Only a small part of Casanova’s life story made it into my books—he lived to be 73, and he’s only in his twenties when the stories take place. And, of course, I’ve fictionalised a lot of things. But his story gave me a lot of the inspiration, and I was able to work in a few things from the early chapters of his autobiography. For example:
1) Giacomo Casanova really had a sister called Faustina who was six years younger than him. Sadly, she died during childhood (which would have been common back then), but I like to think that she would have grown up to be pretty cool. He had five other siblings, who don’t appear in the books, including two brothers who were successful painters—a talent I borrowed for Faustina.
2) He really did leave Venice to go on the Grand Tour, returning in 1753. Of course, that wasn’t actually to escape an old enemy who wanted to steal his magic powers. But…
3) …He did claim to have magical powers! In fact, in The Rose and the Mask, Faustina wonders about the fact that her disreputable brother enjoys the patronage of a well-respected senator, Bragadin, who has even given Giacomo a suite of rooms in his house. Eventually, Giacomo explains how he used magic to earn Bragadin’s favour. This story is true—or very nearly true. Casanova saved Bragadin’s life, then convinced him that he had supernatural abilities, and Bragadin became his patron.
That last one is really what convinced me to try to work him into my story somehow. See, Casanova didn’t actually believe he had magic powers, but he was able to convince other people that he did, which repeatedly worked out pretty well for him. There’s a line from his autobiography that I quoted at the beginning of The Rose and the Mask:
Sorcerers have never existed; but their power has, for those who have had the talent to make others believe they were sorcerers.
Casanova didn’t have magic, but that didn’t matter. All he needed was for other people to believe he did, and he got whatever he wanted. That idea actually became the basis for how magic works in the books.
I went back and forth over whether to include this information as a note in The Rose and the Mask, but eventually I decided that the novel should stand on its own, without me having to explain it. But I was telling a friend about it the other day (I promise I don’t make people listen to this stuff all the time, but she was being very kind!) and she thought it was something readers might be interested in. So, here it is. Let me know if you like it and I’ll try to do more posts like this in the future!
