This translation of Eleonora d’Aragona’s regency letters makes them finally accessible to English speakers and includes a comprehensive Introduction and extensive footnoting.

This book presents the first English translation of the letters that Eleonora d’Aragona, duchess of Ferrara (1450–1493), wrote to her husband, Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara (1431–1505), while acting as his regent during the two wars between competing alliances that wreaked havoc on the Italian peninsula in the final quarter of the fifteenth century—the Pazzi War (1478–1479) and the War of Ferrara (1482–1484). Eleonora proved herself to be an excellent regent, despite the enormous psychological burdens she bore in both conflicts, with her husband and her brother fighting on opposing sides in the Pazzi War and Ercole and his allies finding themselves totally unprepared when Venice declared war on Ferrara in May 1482. At the end of the war in August 1484, Ercole disappeared from Ferrara, leaving Eleonora to continue as his regent.