How Does a Moorish Prince Become a Roman Caesar? Fictions and Forgeries, Emperors and Others from the Spanish "Flores" Romances to the Lead Books of Granada

This article reads the two Spanish versions of the Flores romance as ideologically embedded in the conflict and contact between Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia, as well as after the "Reconquista" of 1492 and the subsequent renegotiation of Spanish-Morisco relations. It argues that the printed version of the romance, published in 1512 and frequently reprinted, imagines a fictional resolution to the problem of the Moriscos' socio-political status by making its Morisco protagonist an emperor of Rome. It contrasts this successful fiction with a failed contemporary forgery that had a similar goal: the Lead Books of Granada.