Although Fernando and Isabel funded the printing of many books whose authors expressed their gratitude in a dedication to both monarchs, this essay will examine a series of texts dedicated to Isabel alone and therefore presumably sponsored or commissioned by her. To the extent that I am interested in the public dimension of the Queen's patronage, that is, the role of that patronage in crafting her self-image or in inspiring the images that others sought to impose upon her, I consider only works that she appears to have commissioned or whose printing she welcomed or funded, and thus I exclude such texts as the Books of Hours that were meant for the monarch's private use. No complete list of the works Isabel sponsored is yet available, but in any case I do not intend to present an exhaustive survey of her literary patronage. My interest is not to do a statistical study, but rather to provide a representative sampling of instances of patronage in an effort to analyze the criteria that may have conditioned the choice of the works the Queen promoted or the criteria of the authors who chose to dedicate certain works to her. In so doing, I will concentrate on cases in which the interaction of patron and author, especially as figured in the dedication or prologue, seems to reveal mutual vested interests.