Lineage was of deep importance to political power in the medieval Middle East. Despite this, it was not enough. To project a sense of legitimacy and divine sanction to their rivals and subjects, medieval Muslim kings and their courtiers not only creatively adapted and played with lineal descent, but used representations of a king’s travels, dreams, and other forms of storytelling to map them into genealogical frameworks that overlapped with the body, soul, and spirit. Rather than question their veracity, this talk aims to show how some of these strategies worked, their advantages, and limits. Using selections from Persian historical narratives from the 14th to the 16th centuries, from the post-Ilkhanid to Safavid periods, it will first contextualize the imagery and language of these choices, showing how history-writing drew from other types of literature, such as Sufi hagiographical narratives. Then, it will focus on the connection between travel, the dreamworld, and living Sufi saints. It will show how rather than being a straightforward process, these elaborate and visually rich narratives were subject to deep ambiguity and multivalence. allowing a particular dream or ritual act to be subverted and used against the sovereign either by a subject or a rival, marking open a new space for negotiating power, kinship, and control over the world.