Marianna is a the wife of Brunello, a well-renowned chef from Italy.
History[]
Early History[]
During her life, Marianna met and married Brunello, a talented chef, and together they had two sons, Pietro and Benicio. Though her youngest son was of simple mind, Marianna loved Benicio, and together the family followed the teachings of the Catholic Church.
In 1546, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman decided to host a chess tournament to determine which nation had the best chess player, and sent an envoy to meet with Brunello and request his services to teach his staff how to cook European-style dishes. The chef agreed, and so he took his family, including Marianna, along with him to Constantinople. Over the next few months, Marianna assisted her husband in teaching the various cooks of the palace's kitchens how to make European dishes.
However, one night, Pietro found Benicio after his younger brother had slit his own wrists, and their youngest son's suicide brought Marianna and Brunello despair. However, the family's grief was worsened when the Church's ambassador, Cardinal Cardoza, refused to give Benicio a Christian burial per Brunello's request.
Marianna continued to help prepare for the tournament's guests, though she was more distant, and started wearing a black bow around her rosary to signify her grief at Benicio's death.
The Tournament[]
On the night of the chess tournament's opening banquet, Marianna was working in the kitchens with her husband and son to cook and serve the dishes for the visiting delegations. At one point, Michelangelo brought along members from the English delegation, Roger Ascham and Bess to the kitchens, where he introduced them to Brunello and his family. Noticing her rosary, Bess asked Marianna if there were many Christians in Constantinople, though the disinterested woman only answered that there was a mix of Christians, Jews and Moslems in the city before resuming help in preparing the main course
The next day, after the visiting Cardinal Farnese was found murdered, which Ascham, working at the Sultan's request, soon determined to have been caused by poison. After some investigating at the Catholic embassy, Cardoza realised he had been the intended victim of the killer. Believing that Brunello had somehow discovered that he had been molesting Benicio before his death and attempted to take revenge, Cardoza sent his manservant Sinon to kill the chef and his wife. Sinon subdued Marianna and Brunello, bound their wrists with rope, and then hung them in the slaughter room, making it appear to be a double suicide once he removed the ropes.
When Ascham came to the kitchens looking to question Brunello after reaching the conclusion that Farnese's meal had been poisoned, he, Bess and a group of servants came across the scene in the kitchen. While waiting in the room with the corpses as guards fetched the Sultan, Ascham examined the scene and Marianna and Brunello's bodies, and made note of the rope burns around their wrists, concluding that they had not taken their own lives.
Meanwhile Pietro - knowing that his parents would never kill themselves but not knowing how to prove it, as well as fearing that he was a target as well - fled into the palace's old cisterns. When Bess later found him, she informed Pietro that Ascham had confirmed that Marianna and Brunello had been murdered.
Eventually coming to a realisation about Cardoza, Ascham spoke to Pietro himself, at which point the chef's son confessed that he had mistakenly killed Farnese while trying to take revenge upon Cardoza for assaulting his brother and refusing to give Benicio a proper Christian burial. Ascham disclosed that Cardoza had deduced he had been the intended victim and mistakenly concluded that Brunello had tried to poison him, and so had arranged for him and Marianna to be killed. Pietro was aghast at this revelation, and soon after, the grief-stricken youth killed himself, unable to live with the burden of knowing that his attempt at revenge had gotten his parents killed.
Personality[]
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Trivia[]
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