Royal women have been court poets’ objects of praise in the Persian literary tradition for centuries. In the Timurid and Safavid periods women of political importance composed poetry, patronized the fine arts, and commissioned historical chronicles to project their power. This study will briefly explore how Parī Khān Khānum— the celibate Safavid princess who virtually ruled Iran during the last years of her father Shah Ṭaḥmāsb’s reign, and played a key role in the rise to power of her brother Ismā’īl Mīrzā—left a strong impression on Safavid historical chroniclers such as Afūshtah Naṭanzī. In his Naqāvat al-Āsār Zikr al-Akhyār dar Tārīkh-i Ṣafaviyah, Naṭanzī surveyed Parī Khān Khānum’s extensive involvement in the affairs of state. In this case, this study will analyze the relationship between her role in historical chronicles and her correspondences with the court poet Muḥtasham Kāshānī, whom she deemed the most eloquent poet of the age. It is interesting to see whether her celibate status enables him to cast her as sacred, erotic, gender-ambiguous, and a religious leader? In his qasā’id, Kāshānī dramatically describes his lady patron in sensual language and also compares her to holy women of Islam such as Fāṭimah the daughter of Prophet Muḥammad and Mary the mother of Jesus. He also plays with gender by casting her simultaneously as a male king and Bilqīs the Queen of Sheba, emphasizing her leadership qualities. Similarly, in 1569, Shīrāzī Navīdī finished his book, Takmīlāt al-Akhbār, dedicating it to Parī Khān Khānum who was the “princess of the world and its inhabitants” and “the Fāṭimah of the time.” This comparison of Iranian princesses to holy women would eventually be found in later Qajar-era praise poetry. Kāshānī versified the princess’ divinity in a time of Shāh Ṭahmāsb’s increasing puritanism and the public’s ghulāt sensibilities, highlighting the strong relation of poetry to the rhetoric of political authority. With this rich interaction between performance, patronage, and desire, it can be surmised that the depiction of Parī Khān Khānum as a celibate symbol of eros is not empty hyperbole but an abstraction of royalty aiming to capture the imagination of Shiite audiences.