Alexander’s Heirs has been long in the making and has taken many forms; along the way, I have incurred more debts of gratitude than I will be able to mention here. Research for this book in an early iteration as a Ph. D. dissertation was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, the Fundación Mutua Madrileña, Sigma Delta Pi, and Georgetown University. Its later development has been possible thanks to the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute; the Lindsay Young Visiting Regional Faculty Fellowship at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Marco University of Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Rhodes College, through the Faculty Development Endowment Grant, the Spence Wilson Travel Grant, and the L. Palmer Brown Chair in Interdisciplinary Humanities; and the project “HERES. Patrimonio textual ibérico y novohispánico. Recuperación y memoria” (CAM, 2018-T1/HUM-10230), directed by Ricardo Pichel (Universidad de Alcalá, 2019–2023). The members of this collection’s editorial board, readers, and editors Marcella Mulder and Kate Hammond at Brill have been instrumental in developing the final version, which has also benefited from the careful work of Mary Fletcher and Deborah Shulevitz. Early versions of some sections in chapters one and four appeared in La corónica as “‘El cabdal sepulcro’: Word and Image in the Libro de Alexandre” (La corónica 38.2: 71–98, 2010) and “‘E el señor de Galicia era del linaje de Troya’: El Victorial and the Cultural Memory of Petrismo” (La corónica 45.2: 241–266, 2017); I am grateful to the journal’s editors for their permission to reissue.
An ever-expanding network of cherished colleagues has been crucial throughout the writing process. Emily Francomano has provided unfailing encouragement, enthusiastic support, numerous readings, and trusted advice from the very beginning until the last stages of this book. I have enormously benefited from the attentive reading of early versions of the book by Ryan Giles, Patricia Grieve, Simone Pinet, Julian Weiss, and Alejandro Yarza. Isidro Rivera has fielded innumerable calls and requests for advice over the years, always happy to share his scholarly and practical knowledge with serenity and good humor. Many other colleagues have also offered useful comments, advice, and assistance, including Hannah Barker, Rafael Beltrán, Robin Bower, Linde Brocato, Juan Casas Rigall, Claudia D’Ambruoso, Matthew Desing, Ana Sáez Hidalgo, Sol Miguel Prendes, and Sacramento Roselló. The librarians at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the University of Notre Dame, and Rhodes College have
Having taken much time and attention that should have been theirs, this book is dedicated to my family, and especially to Inés.