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1562 was a annus horribilis for the Medici, and would forever after cast a dark pall over the Medici image that Cosimo I had struggled so hard to improve after the trashcan fire that was Alessandro il Moro's reign.

Cosimo persuaded his wife, Leonor de Toledo to accompany him and his sons to inspect the new fortifications of Pisa. Despite doctors' warning against malaria, Leonor accompanied him. Unfortunately, her second son, Giovanni, contracted the disease and died in November. Her third son, Garzia, caught it too, and died a few days later in December. Finally, a week after Garzia, Leonor herself died of malaria.

Of course, Cosimo came back to Florence alone and Dane Rumour set to work. The story ran that Giovanni and Garzia had had an argument and Garzia had stabbed his brother to death. On hearing this, in a rage, Cosimo ran Garzia through with a sword and Leonor died shortly thereafter from grief at having married into such a family.

Cosimo released the official cause of death but it took until an autopsy in the 21st century to prove that tbe duke had been telling the truth. To give an idea of how pervasive the rumours were, when the duchess of Lauenburg married the younger son of Grand Duke Cosimo III a 150 years later, she remarked that she refused to go to Florence because the Medici had a reputation of murdering their consorts. Admittedly, her refusal was based on the murder of Cosimo and Leonor's favourite daughter (by her husband), Isabella in July 1576, and a month later, the Medici family psycho, Cosimo's youngest son, Pietro, strangled his wife with the dog leash.

So, what if Cosimo and Leonor go to Pisa with Garzia and Giovanni and everyone comes back alive? With Giovanni already in the clergy, it seems unlikely IMO that Ferdinando (OTL grand duke) will get pushed into the clergy as well. Maybe he'd wind up in the Order of Malta or something like that. But Garzia as a boy unfettered by clerical skirts would be the one to marry his cousin who had the unfortunate dog-walking accident OTL. Which would remove another rumour from the mill...
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