UsefulCharts Gives a Pope Credit for Portugal’s Treaty—and Cesare Borgia His Brother’s Army

History becomes dangerously convenient when complicated events are reduced to one powerful man making all the decisions.

In The Borgia Family Tree, UsefulCharts presents the extraordinary rise of a Spanish family that captured the papacy, married into European royalty, conquered Italian cities, and helped shape the colonization of the Americas.

The story is certainly worth telling. But some of its most consequential details become unreliable precisely where the episode attempts to explain how power worked.

Pope Alexander VI is credited with a territorial settlement that Spain and Portugal negotiated between themselves. His son Cesare is placed in command of an army actually entrusted to his brother Giovanni. Even the account of how the family's first pope rose to prominence confuses two different claimants to the papacy.

These are not interchangeable names in an otherwise sound family tree. They concern who exercised authority, who made decisions, and how political power passed between people.

The documents tell a more interesting story than the simplified version.

The Pope Did Not Negotiate the Treaty That Divided the Atlantic

The episode describes Alexander VI as responsible for the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided overseas territories between Spain and Portugal.

That description gives the pope too much credit for the final agreement.

Alexander VI certainly played a decisive role in establishing the framework for Iberian expansion. On May 4, 1493, he issued Inter caetera, a papal decree granting the Spanish monarchs claims to territories west of a line approximately 100 leagues beyond the Azores and Cape Verde islands.

But Portugal rejected the arrangement.

King John II had substantial Atlantic interests of his own. The Portuguese crown had invested in exploration along Africa's coast and was unwilling to accept a division that could jeopardize its maritime ambitions.

Portugal therefore negotiated directly with Ferdinand and Isabella.

The result was the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7, 1494.

The crucial difference was 270 leagues.

The original papal boundary stood 100 leagues west of the islands used as reference points. The treaty moved the division to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde.

This was not an insignificant adjustment. It protected Portuguese opportunities in the Atlantic and ultimately placed part of present-day Brazil within Portugal's sphere of expansion.

Princeton University's historical account explicitly attributes the revision to Portuguese objections and negotiations initiated by John II. Spain's Ministry of Culture likewise identifies the agreement as the product of negotiations between representatives of the two monarchies.

The treaty itself is even clearer.

Its opening identifies the representatives who negotiated the agreement. Those acting for Ferdinand and Isabella included Enrique Enríquez, Gutierre de Cárdenas, and Rodrigo Maldonado. Portugal was represented by Ruy de Sousa, João de Sousa, and Aires de Almada.

Alexander VI was not among them.

The agreement subsequently requested papal confirmation, making the distinction between the sovereigns' negotiation and the Church's religious authority explicit.

The treaty also required both kingdoms to respect the other's territorial sphere when conducting exploration, trade, or conquest.

Its purpose was not simply to draw a line on a map. It was to regulate competition between two expanding maritime powers.

The original document, preserved in translation by Yale Law School's Avalon Project, establishes the parties, the revised boundary, and the obligations they accepted.

Alexander VI helped create the conditions for the settlement. Portugal negotiated different terms.

Confusing those two acts transforms a diplomatic contest into a story about one pope commanding the world.

That is a substantial loss of historical understanding.

The More Disturbing Document Is the One the Episode Barely Examines

The episode raises a serious accusation against Alexander VI: that his decisions helped legitimize the enslavement and exploitation of Indigenous Americans.

That criticism has historical substance.

But the mechanism matters.

In Inter caetera, Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella authority over territories whose inhabitants had no opportunity to participate in the arrangement.

The document protected territories already possessed by Christian rulers.

It provided no equivalent protection for the political authority of non-Christian societies.

That distinction deserves more attention than the familiar observation that Europeans divided lands already inhabited by millions.

The pope's declaration treated Christian sovereignty as something deserving legal recognition while authorizing the Spanish crown to exercise authority over lands occupied by other peoples.

The original decree granted Spain extensive powers over territory, settlements, and jurisdiction. It also required the monarchs to pursue the conversion of Indigenous inhabitants to Christianity.

The document did not simply command the enslavement of everyone Spain encountered. Its contribution was more fundamental: it supplied religious and political authority for imposing Spanish rule.

The implications became clearer in 1513.

That year, the Spanish monarchy introduced the Requerimiento, a formal declaration used during conquest.

Indigenous communities were expected to acknowledge Spanish authority and permit Christian evangelization. Resistance could then be treated as justification for war, punishment, and enslavement.

The procedure translated claims about papal authority into a practical instrument of colonial domination.

Historian Yanay Israeli, writing in Law and History Review, documents how the Requerimiento drew on earlier Spanish legal practices and converted Indigenous resistance into a purported justification for coercion.

This connection supplies something the episode's broad criticism does not: an identifiable process linking a papal grant to later colonial legal practice.

There is another revealing development.

In March 2023, the Vatican formally addressed the historical documents associated with the Doctrine of Discovery.

Its statement acknowledged that the papal decrees failed to adequately respect Indigenous peoples' dignity and rights. It also recognized that colonial powers had manipulated these documents to justify abuses.

The Vatican maintained that the Doctrine of Discovery was not part of Catholic teaching.

That distinction does not erase the historical consequences.

It establishes that even the institution from which these documents originated now acknowledges their contribution to a profoundly damaging political framework.

The episode's broad moral judgment is therefore defensible.

Its weakness is that it leaves the reader with an accusation when the documented machinery of colonial power is considerably more revealing.

The Falklands Claim Is Real. That Does Not Settle the Dispute.

UsefulCharts makes another striking connection: Argentina has used the Treaty of Tordesillas to support its claim to the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas.

This is not an invented connection.

Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs explicitly identifies the papal decrees and the 1494 treaty among the earliest historical instruments supporting Spain's territorial claims.

Argentina argues that it subsequently inherited Spain's rights in the South Atlantic.

The episode is therefore correct to identify a relationship between Renaissance territorial agreements and the modern dispute.

What it does not adequately explain is the limitation of that relationship.

Spain and Portugal could agree to divide territories between themselves. Their agreement did not automatically bind every other European state.

England was not a party to the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Neither was France.

A May 2026 analysis by Chatham House specifically addresses this problem. It explains that Spain's early claims rested partly on papal grants, but other European powers did not necessarily recognize those grants or the treaty.

The dispute subsequently developed through exploration, settlements, competing assertions of sovereignty, and the exercise of governmental authority.

Argentina's modern position is not based exclusively on a fifteenth-century agreement.

It also concerns the inheritance of Spanish colonial territories, Argentine administration following independence, and the British reassertion of control in 1833.

Britain, meanwhile, maintains its own historical sovereignty claim and emphasizes the Falkland Islanders' right to self-determination.

Those positions cannot be resolved by extending a line drawn in 1494.

The treaty is evidence within an argument. It is not a judgment settling that argument.

A historical document can genuinely form part of a country's claim without establishing that the claim is legally decisive.

That distinction is essential when explaining how old imperial agreements are invoked in modern territorial disputes.

Antarctica Cannot Be Claimed Merely by Extending a Renaissance Boundary

The episode also connects the Treaty of Tordesillas to Chile's territorial claims in Antarctica.

Here, too, there is a genuine historical connection worth investigating.

The treaty described a dividing line extending between the poles. Chilean arguments concerning Antarctic territory have drawn on historical claims inherited from Spanish rule.

But the legal and diplomatic situation is considerably more complicated than extending a fifteenth-century line southward.

On November 6, 1940, Chile issued Decree No. 1747, formally defining its claimed Antarctic territory.

The decree identified a sector between 53° and 90° west longitude.

It explained that the boundaries had been established following examination of geographical, historical, legal, and diplomatic material.

The decree itself did not specify that the Treaty of Tordesillas alone established Chilean sovereignty.

The distinction matters because Chile's Antarctic position developed through colonial historical arguments, geographic proximity, national legislation, and twentieth-century diplomacy.

It was not simply a matter of applying Alexander VI's decree to the South Pole.

More importantly, the modern legal framework changed in 1959.

The Antarctic Treaty, which entered into force in 1961, preserved existing positions concerning sovereignty without resolving competing claims.

Its Article IV prohibits new territorial claims or the enlargement of existing ones while the treaty remains in force.

Chile, Argentina, and Britain maintain overlapping Antarctic claims. Other countries do not recognize those claims at all.

The result is not a continent whose ownership can be determined by a Renaissance agreement.

It is a territory governed by an international framework designed to prevent competing sovereignty claims from obstructing peaceful scientific cooperation.

The historical relationship with Tordesillas is worth mentioning.

Presenting it without explaining the modern legal framework leaves readers with an impression of territorial continuity that the documents cannot establish.

UsefulCharts Gives Cesare Borgia the Army Commanded by His Brother

The territorial discussion is not the episode's only consequential weakness.

The family history itself contains an important error.

The presenter says Cesare Borgia was made commander of the papal army in 1496 and subsequently led campaigns against the Orsini family.

But the commander entrusted with that campaign in 1496 was Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, Cesare's brother.

This is not a disputed identification.

Felix Gilbert's detailed biography of Cesare in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani traces the sequence.

Alexander VI recalled Giovanni from Spain to lead the campaign against the Orsini. Giovanni arrived in Rome on August 10, 1496, and received command of the papal troops as the Church's gonfaloniere.

The campaign continued through the winter of 1496–1497 and ultimately failed.

Cesare, meanwhile, remained a cardinal.

The distinction becomes even more important when the family's subsequent history is considered.

Giovanni was murdered in June 1497.

His death removed the son Alexander VI had favored for a secular military and dynastic career.

Cesare eventually abandoned the cardinalate in August 1498, established an alliance with France, and began pursuing the military ambitions for which he later became famous.

His major territorial campaigns followed in 1499 and 1500.

Treccani's biography documents both the original appointment of Giovanni and Cesare's later transition into military leadership.

The error therefore does more than assign an incorrect date.

It transfers Giovanni's military role to Cesare before the event that helped transform Cesare's position within the family.

A genealogical explanation should make that change especially clear.

Alexander VI initially had different roles available for his sons: ecclesiastical authority for Cesare and secular power for Giovanni.

Giovanni's death altered that arrangement.

The emergence of Cesare as a territorial conqueror was not simply the uninterrupted continuation of a career already established in 1496.

It involved a significant reorganization of the family's political ambitions.

When a family tree gives one brother the career of another, it obscures the very succession it exists to explain.

The Wrong Clement Appears at the Beginning

Another mistake occurs much earlier in the story.

The presenter credits Alfonso de Borja, the future Calixtus III, with persuading Antipope Clement VII to resign in favor of Pope Martin V.

The historical figure was Clement VIII.

The difference is not merely a matter of numbering.

Clement VII, an Avignon claimant during the Great Western Schism, died in 1394.

Martin V was not elected until 1417.

The individual whom Alfonso de Borja helped persuade to surrender his claim was Clement VIII, also known as Gil Sánchez Muñoz.

The event took place in 1429.

Michael Mallett's biography of Calixtus III in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani provides the circumstances.

Cardinal Pierre de Foix was seeking Clement VIII's resignation. He enlisted Borja, who traveled to Peñíscola and successfully persuaded the antipope to abandon his claim.

Borja's service helped secure his subsequent appointment as Bishop of Valencia.

The correct account is a useful illustration of how the future Borgia pope advanced his career through diplomacy.

It also demonstrates why identifying the right individual matters.

Two antipopes with similar names belonged to different phases of the schism.

Confusing them creates an impossible chronology and conceals the circumstances in which Alfonso's intervention actually occurred.

A single correction restores the relationship between the diplomatic achievement and the appointment that followed.

The Verdict: The Borgias Do Not Need Historical Shortcuts

UsefulCharts is dealing with a family whose history contains extraordinary examples of ambition, corruption, political patronage, conquest, and dynastic survival.

There is no shortage of material.

Alexander VI used his office to advance relatives and strengthen royal alliances. Cesare Borgia pursued territorial power through military force and diplomacy. Papal documents helped European rulers justify sweeping claims over territories inhabited by other peoples.

These are consequential historical facts.

But the episode repeatedly compresses the relationships needed to explain them.

Alexander VI's territorial decree becomes, in effect, the settlement subsequently negotiated by Spain and Portugal.

Giovanni Borgia's military command is transferred to Cesare.

Clement VIII becomes Clement VII.

The Falklands and Antarctica are connected to a Renaissance treaty without sufficiently distinguishing historical arguments from the legal systems governing modern sovereignty disputes.

None of these problems requires speculation about the creator's motives. Nor do they justify rejecting everything in the episode.

They establish a narrower and more defensible criticism: the account is least reliable when it moves from identifying historical figures to explaining how their power actually operated.

That is precisely where a family tree should be most valuable.

The real Borgia story is not simply about one corrupt pope exercising unlimited authority.

It is about a family navigating institutions it could influence but never entirely control; monarchs negotiating agreements despite papal preferences; sons assigned different political careers; and successors dismantling the arrangements their predecessors created.

History becomes more intelligible when those relationships are preserved.

The Borgias were ruthless enough without giving them one another's achievements.

And Alexander VI was powerful enough without making him the sole author of a treaty Portugal successfully renegotiated.

The scandal is not that the video makes history look ugly. It is that, at important moments, it makes history look simpler than the evidence allows.

References

Original work

• UsefulCharts — Borgia Family Tree. YouTube; publication date not established here. Watch the original episode. The work under examination; the supplied transcript establishes the claims and chronology being challenged.

Historical documents and supporting research

• Pope Alexander VI — Inter caetera, May 4, 1493. English translation reproduced by Encyclopedia Virginia from Frances Gardiner Davenport's 1917 collection. Read the papal decree. Establishes the original territorial grant, its 100-league boundary, and its treatment of Christian sovereignty and evangelization.

• Treaty Between Spain and Portugal Concluded at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494. Yale Law School, Avalon Project; historical document. Read the treaty. Identifies the negotiating parties, the 370-league boundary, and the obligations accepted by both monarchies.

• Princeton University Library — Demarcation Lines. Historical cartographic research; date not specified. Read the historical analysis. Explains Portugal's objections to the papal arrangement and the direct negotiations that produced the revised treaty.

• Yanay Israeli — The Requerimiento in the Old World: Making Demands and Keeping Records in the Legal Culture of Late Medieval Castile. Law and History Review, Cambridge University Press, February 2022. Read the research paper. Establishes how Spanish colonial authorities invoked papal sovereignty to justify coercion and conquest.

• Vatican — Joint Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery. Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development, March 30, 2023. Read the Vatican statement. Acknowledges the historical documents' failure to respect Indigenous rights while rejecting the Doctrine of Discovery as Catholic teaching.

• Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs — Antecedentes históricos. Official historical explanation; date not specified. Read Argentina's position. Explicitly identifies the papal decrees and Treaty of Tordesillas among the historical foundations of Argentina's Malvinas claim; it presents Argentina's position, not an independent resolution of sovereignty.

• Chatham House — Who Owns the Falkland Islands?. May 2026. Read the legal and historical analysis. Examines competing sovereignty arguments and explains why agreements between Spain and Portugal did not automatically bind other European powers.

• Republic of Chile — Decree No. 1747. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 6, 1940; reproduced by the Library of the National Congress of Chile. Read the decree. Establishes Chile's formally declared Antarctic boundaries and the historical and legal considerations cited for the decision.

• Antarctic Treaty Secretariat — The Antarctic Treaty. Treaty signed December 1, 1959; entered into force in 1961. Read the treaty framework. Explains Article IV's treatment of existing sovereignty positions and the restrictions on new or enlarged territorial claims.

• Felix Gilbert — Borgia, Cesare. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 12, Treccani, 1971. Read the historical biography. Documents Giovanni Borgia's command of the 1496 Orsini campaign, Cesare's ecclesiastical career, and his later emergence as a military leader.

• Michael Mallett — Callisto III, papa. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 16, Treccani, 1973. Read the historical biography. Identifies Clement VIII as the antipope persuaded by Alfonso de Borja in 1429 and explains the resulting appointment to Valencia.