Conclusion
Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga together navigated the highs and many lows of the first conflicts of the Italian Wars, their cooperation underpinned by a mutual devotion to their children and concern for the future of the Gonzaga regime. But this study has shown that it was difficult to agree about the terms of that collaboration, a situation that the richly nuanced sources permit us to understand within the terms of premodernity. The couple’s acrimonious epistolary negotiations during the last years of their union over the extent to which the conventional marital hierarchy should be observed provide evidence of the powerful influence of gendered norms, but also of how prescriptive social rules might at times be modified or ignored by individuals when pragmatic issues overtook ideology.