The Nexus Archive
Gothic Fiction · Novel
Valperga
by Mary Shelley · The Maker's Witness · British Romanticism, 1797-1851
Shelley's historical novel of ambition, exile, faction, love, and conscience in medieval Italy.
- Advanced
- 1823
- ~11 hr 30 min read
- 13 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Preface guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
History Under The Pressure Of Desire
Mary Shelley published Valperga in 1823, setting it among the rival cities and warring factions of fourteenth-century Italy. Its central public figure, Castruccio Castracani, was a real soldier and ruler whose rise had already attracted chroniclers and political mythmakers. Shelley takes that record as material for a larger question: what does a conqueror's success look like from the lives caught inside it?
This is a historical novel with the weather of romance: castles, exiles, disguises, prophecies, ruined loyalties, and a landscape charged by memory. Public campaigns share the page with intimate conversations and long accounts of private suffering. Religious belief can offer comfort and purpose, but it also exposes people to persecution and to those who exploit their hopes. The narrator often pauses over the distance between what a person imagines and what another person needs.
Castruccio's brilliance can win both soldiers and friends. Euthanasia, the ruler of Valperga, grounds her authority in care for her people and a belief in their freedom. Love between such people carries a political question into a private room. Affection may draw them together while their ideas of duty pull them apart. The castle gives that conflict a home: a place where land, memory, responsibility and desire meet.
The opening pages
Volume I, Chapter I
Birth of Castruccio.--His family exiled from Lucca when he is eleven years of age.
The other nations of Europe were yet immersed in barbarism, when Italy, where the light of civilization had never been wholly eclipsed, began to emerge from the darkness of the ruin of the Western Empire, and to catch from the East the returning rays of literature and science. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante had already given a permanent form to the language which was the offspring of this revolution; he was personally engaged in those political struggles, in which the elements of the good and evil that have since assumed a more permanent form were contending; his disappointment and exile gave him leisure to meditate, and produced his Divina Comedia.
Lombardy and Tuscany, the most civilized districts of Italy, exhibited astonishing specimens of human genius; but at the same time they were torn to pieces by domestic faction, and almost destroyed by the fury of civil wars. The antient quarrels of the Guelphs and the Ghibelines were started with renovated zeal, under the new distinctions of Bianchi and Neri. The Ghibelines and the Bianchi were the friends of the emperor, asserting the supremacy and universality of his sway over all other dominion, ecclesiastical or civil: the Guelphs and the Neri were the partizans of liberty. Florence was at the head of the Guelphs, and employed, as they were employed by it in their turn, the Papal power as a pretext and an instrument.
The distinctions of Bianchi and Neri took their rise in Pistoia, a town of some moment between Florence and Lucca. The Neri being expelled from Pistoia, the exiles fixed their residence in Lucca; where they so fortified and augmented their party, as to be able in the year 1301 to expel the Bianchi, among whom was Castruccio Castracani dei Antelminelli.
The family of the Antelminelli was one of the most distinguished in Lucca. They had followed the emperors in their Italian wars, and had received in recompense titles and reward. The father of Castruccio was the chief of his house; he had been a follower of the unfortunate Manfred, king of Naples, and his party feelings as a Ghibeline derived new fervour from the adoration with which he regarded his noble master. Manfred was the natural son of the last emperor of the house of Swabia; before the age of twenty he had performed the most brilliant exploits, and undergone the most romantic vicissitudes, in all of which the father of Castruccio had been his faithful page and companion. The unrelenting animosity with which the successive Popes pursued his royal master, gave rise in his bosom to a hatred, that was heightened by the contempt with which he regarded their cowardly and artful policy.
Chapter guides · 13
Preface
History Becomes A Moral Experiment
Shelley distinguishes the historical record from the romance built around Castruccio.
Main idea
Castruccio was a real ruler, but accounts of his life mix history with invention. Shelley explains which accounts she uses and acknowledges that her novel changes some dates.
Recap
She sets aside Machiavelli's life of Castruccio as a romance. She instead names historians and chroniclers, then quotes Moreri's short account of the ruler's rise, wars and death. The Preface closes by warning that dates in that account differ from those in her narrative.
Volume I, Chapter II
The Desire To Escape Oblivion
Reunion and bereavement turn Castruccio toward the pursuit of fame.
Main idea
Castruccio answers loss by seeking a life that others will remember. The narrator questions whether fame will bring him happiness.
Recap
After fleeing the collapse of a bridge during a Florentine festival, Castruccio finds shelter with the Adimari family. He renews his friendship with Euthanasia, then returns to his father. Later, his father dies of fever, and Castruccio survives the same illness alone. He leaves Ancona to join Francesco Guinigi. Grief gives way to a burning ambition to become famous.
Volume I, Chapter IV
Adventure Produces A Victim
A quarrel forces Castruccio to flee England and puts his host in danger.
Volume I, Chapter VII
War Reveals the Cost of Power
Castruccio gains military standing while Cremona pays for the emperor's anger.
Volume I, Chapter X
Euthanasia Speaks From Loss
Euthanasia describes the education and family losses behind her quiet sadness.
Volume I, Chapter XIV
Love Waits Beside Ambition
Pepi seeks a secret alliance while Castruccio and Euthanasia plan their marriage.
Volume II, Chapter II
Beatrice Enters A Dangerous Story
Beatrice's religious upbringing places her in danger when her claims provoke the Inquisition.
Volume II, Chapter IV
Self-Knowledge Without Reform
Castruccio recognizes the harm he has done Beatrice, then finds excuses to move on.
Volume II, Chapter VIII
Reason After The Collapse Of Hope
Learning Beatrice's story destroys Euthanasia's ideal of Castruccio.
Volume II, Chapter XII
Conquest Reaches The Home
Euthanasia loses her home and refuses to turn forgiveness into marriage.
Volume III, Chapter VII
False Prophecy Turns Deadly
Mandragola exploits Beatrice's longing, while Euthanasia struggles to care for her.
Volume III, Chapter X
The Conspiracy Enters The Trap
Tripalda betrays the conspiracy after Euthanasia threatens to expose his crimes.
Conclusion
What The Chronicle Cannot Hold
Castruccio's growing honors end in fever, death and a reminder of human weakness.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Valperga?
- About 11 hr 30 min in total.
- How difficult is Valperga?
- Advanced. A long novel; about 12 hours of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1823. The text follows Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, in three volumes (1823).
- Can I read Valperga for free?
- Valperga is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 13 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while still very young, drawing on Romantic science, grief, philosophical debate, and gothic storytelling. The novel became one of the foundation texts for modern horror and science fiction.
“Who is responsible for the suffering created by ambition?”
Shelley gives Nexus a monster story with philosophical force: creation becomes ethics, and fear becomes a question of accountability.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Valperga is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.