ABSTRACT
Isabella baulked at providing expensive presents for more than a few of the ladies, wanting to restrict his gifts to those closest to the king. Whenever they were apart during his childhood, in her letters to Federico Isabella stressed how dearly she loved him, how much she missed him, how often she thought of him. Isabella does seem to have taken on the routine business of governing the state, supervising matters which Federico was probably quite content to leave to her care and experience. In the last decade of her life, no longer complaining of being kept in the dark about affairs of state – apparently because she felt she was being kept sufficiently abreast of them, rather than because she had reconciled herself to being excluded – Isabella was at last content to settle into the more retired life of a dowager.
