Background
Born about 935, she was the daughter of the King Ramiro II of León by his second wife, Urraca Sánchez of Pamplona. She was made a nun by her father, who built the "wonderfully large" monastery of San Salvador in León.
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Elvira Ramirez
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Career
By the age of 11, and already a nun, she started to appear in court documents. Under her half-brother Ordoño III of León she held documents important to a land dispute, suggesting that San Salvador had perhaps become a chancery of sorts. In 968-69 the Vikings raided León and Elvira organised the defence of the country.
Having sent envoys to Cordoba on a regular basis to pay tribute, in 974 she precipitated a crisis, apparently intentionally, when her ambassadors said to caliph al-Hakam II something so offensive that they were expelled and the translator punished.
This proved disastrous, its repulse allowing an army to emerge from Gormaz that then defeated the Christian armies in the field, lifting the siege. As an apparent result of this military defeat, Elvira retired from the court, being replaced as regent by the Dowager Queen Teresa in 975.
Her view toward the new king"s reign is seen in her last known document, dated 986, in which she makes grant of lands that the king had already given away, suggesting that she did not recognize his authority. However, when First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Mansur took León and forced Bermudo to flee into Galicia, the general did not install a new Leonese king in his place.
Opinion on Elvira"s rule has been divided.
Past authors have suggested that she was weak, ruling a divided nobility only with the help from her mother"s kingdom of Pamplona until this became untenable. However, Pick has recently presented a different view of her, as ruling a kingdom that drew men seeking opportunity from across the realm and as far as Pamplona and leading a Peninsula-wide rebellion, only losing her position as a consequence of a military fiasco.
