Ability!

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Dateline, Cesena, December 26 1502.  Duke Valentinois, Cesare Borgia, puts a brutal but loyal associate in charge of his new lands of the Romagna.  Ramiro de Lorca quickly earns the hatred and contempt of everyone there.  The day after Chrismas, the duke rides in and exclaims, 'I wanted my sheep shorn, not flayed'!  He even bothered to charge Ramiro with plotting against him, Cesare was nothing if not law abiding.*  He then executes Ramiro, puts his head on a pike, and displays the block, body and head in the town square.  Now beloved by his subjects, Cesare is the darling of the hour and no doubt jacked up the taxes at the same time.
Machiavelli, who is dumbstruck by admiration concerning this, states that Ramiro was cut in two pieces with a block of wood displayed next to him.  This is rather vague, so I am going with an executioner's block, I feel sure there was one handy, and a beheading.  He may have been cut in half, these Italians were most inventive when it came to capital punishment.  The block could also have been a sort of baton symbolizing justice and retribution, but that does not fit the Occam's Razor constant I like to keep to.
This incident is alluded to in Dune, when Baron Vladimir Harkonnen puts 'Beast' Rabban in charge of Arrakis, so that the na-Baron Feyd-Rautha can show up as the people's savior.  Dune was not a bad book at all, and is now on it's third film adaption.  Of course the Baron steals the show and in the first movie Sting and Paul Smith as the Harkonnen b'hoys were the best thing about it.


Not a bad performance at all, especially for a musician.


Paul Lawrence Smith as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen, 'Beast'.  https://youtu.be/30WjxhLASCU
  Dave Bautista is slated to be the Beast in the new movie.  Is that super cool or what? 

*(The law being, of course, what Cesare said it was).

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