Cesare Borgia is the game's primary antagonist and the sharpest version of Brotherhood's political argument. He is charismatic, effective, genuinely capable of the things he promises — the military genius that the game presents is real. The tyranny is not in incompetence but in the specific violence of someone who has decided that the end justifies every available means. The savior's face is the presentation. The blade reveals the tyrant beneath it.

Ezio's approach to the Roman campaign is the systematic removal of the face — the Borgia captains, the towers, the economic control. Each blade reveals another layer of what the Borgia power structure actually is: not the order they claim to represent but the protection of Cesare's particular ambition.