Netflix's The Leopard: Digging Deeper into the Concetta Tancredi Angelica Triangle
- Cherish
- Jun 14
- 5 min read
Spoiler Warning: This post discusses scenes from all six episodes of The Leopard
I love The Leopard. I think it is a brilliant series. I also think the love triangle between Concetta, her cousin Tancredi, and Don Calogero’s daughter Angelica, is one of its weaker aspects. As I have not read Giuseppe Tomasi's book nor seen the 1963 film, my comments here are solely based on the series. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Concetta (a mesmerising Benedetta Porcaroli) grew up with Tancredi. She loved her cousin long before she loved her cousin. Given the straight laced Paolo’s absolute dislike of him, we can assume that Tancredi was the cool Salina, the charmer, the devil may care type. Not even the convent bred Concetta could resist that. And there was no need to resist it. After all, they were 19th century aristocrats. A marriage between Concetta and Tancredi would have been proper, even expected. The Prince was no longer as wealthy as he used to be, but he was far from destitute. He had no need to marry his daughter off for money. He could have seen her settled with Tancredi with a good dowry.
Do I believe Concetta’s feelings for Tancredi were genuine? Yes. Concetta gave Tancredi her heart and never took it back. The wound of her interrupted journey toward pleasure, toward joy, toward ecstasy, never healed. Even after months of correspondence with Colonel Bombello, even with his absolute devotion, with his utter willingness to give her whatever she wanted, there was no joy in Concetta when they finally reunited, when he leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Marriage to him was just a way to escape her father.
With Tancredi, Concetta had to constantly restrain herself from throwing herself at him. There was a passionate, curious woman in Concetta, the one who walked in on Tancredi naked and later drew a naked man, the one who chafed at the limitations of the convent and wanted to study the stars. That was the Concetta where Tancredi was concerned. No one else had been able to awaken her from her dutiful slumber through life the way Tancredi could.
Tancredi was an entirely different matter. Do I believe he loved Concetta? Yes, as the beautiful cousin he grew up with. When we first met them, it was almost as though Tancredi merely tolerated Concetta’s attention. His vanity enjoyed her desire, but he did not long for her. It was only after Colonel Bombello’s obvious, desperate attraction to Concetta that Tancredi asked her to elope with him.
Was that a matter of a man finally seeing a woman he grew up with as a woman? Perhaps. Or, Tancredi was like a little boy who paid little attention to a toy, but the moment someone else wanted it, it was all his heart desired. I lean toward the latter.
In any case, the moment Angelica entered the picture, Tancredi pushed Concetta away again. Here, I will give Tancredi some grace. Angelica was of surpassing beauty, but more than that, she evoked none of the innocent dignity that Concetta did. She laughed at a particularly horrid joke about assaulting nuns at wartime. This was a woman who would not pray the Hail Mary after every kiss (the Prince’s complaint about his wife). Young though she was, she was a woman of the world, she could match Tancredi want for want because the path to pleasure was not unfamiliar to her. Her non-aristocratic background aside, she was a far better match to Tancredi than Concetta.
Tancredi was in lust, but his choice of Angelica was also a practical one. Tancredi was a poor man in a wealthy family. As much as his uncle favoured him, as much as his aunt and cousins (except Paolo) loved him, he was not one of them. He was not the heir. Once Don Fabrizio had passed, he would be at the financial mercy of Paolo, who liked him not one bit. When he joined the rioters and later, Garibaldi’s troops, I could buy that there was some idealism there, but mostly, he wanted to be on what he thought was the winning side. Tancredi wanted to advance. He wanted to build a life for himself outside of the ruins of his parents’ mansion, outside of his uncle’s charity. He was ambitious because he needed to be ambitious. Concetta would provide him with a beautiful wife and a generous dowry. Angelica was a sexually exciting wife with a nauseatingly wealthy father, who was willing to part with a significant slice of his enormous fortune to prove that he had arrived, that he was now at the very height of society with his daughter the wife of the Prince’s nephew.
Even when their lust had cooled, Tancredi and Angelica did not rest on their wealth. Tancredi must advance in the new Italy. They jockeyed for power as others did, because working toward something they wanted, something that would advance them, was deeply embedded in their psyche – Tancredi as a penniless aristocrat and Angelica as the daughter Don Calogero raised to help him rise to the zenith of society.
I saw some comments expressing their disappointment over the series depiction of Angelica whoring herself to advance Tancredi’s career, which was, according to them, not in the book (I have not confirmed this). Whilst I agree those scenes were unnecessary, I also felt they were added to reinforce the villainy of Don Calogero.
This began with the birth scene, when Don Calogeros' wife apologised to him for birthing a girl instead of a boy. Don Cologero was only unhappy for a moment, for he realised that a daughter would be useful to him. Angelica was raised to look and act like a lady. Whilst he hid his wife who could not read, Angelica was sent to Paris to study. As wealthy as Don Calogero was, there were social limits he could not yet breach. His beautiful daughter could, and did.
Angelica knew this. She grew up knowing that all that effort toward her looks and education was so that her father could use her when the time was right. When she made a move at the Prince as he walked her home, she was acting on a long planted seed. Her beauty was key to the aristocracy. She could seduce her way into rooms that were long closed to her father.
Of course she must have been disappointed as her marriage fell apart, but her affair (or affairs) went beyond sleeping around because her husband was sleeping around. She chose the French ambassador because his influence could help Tancredi’s career. His rise was her rise, no matter their private struggles as husband and wife.
Angelica was a tragic character, moulded into an enchantress by an ambitious father, and turned into a power chaser at any cost by a disinterested husband. When Tancredi used the money he received as her dowry to help out Concetta in her war against Don Calogero, that was just yet another instance of someone making use of her. She grew up as her father raised her, a beautiful, desirable tool.
It is a mark of The Leopard’s overall strength as a series that though I am not too fond of this particular love triangle, and I know there will not be another season for the show was based on one beloved book, I still imagine possible continuations of the story of Concetta, Tancredi, and Angelica. Older and with more scars, what would they be like? Let your imagination roam.