The introduction identifies a generation of men and women of letters whose activities strongly influenced politics in a time of conflict, but who do not fall neatly into the categories of either Renaissance humanist or philosophe. These actors moved on the edges of official diplomacy. Often marginalized, they developed practices of self-promotion and improvisation which helped them become multi-embedded across different societies and political spheres. Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654) was one such actor, who used this multi-embeddedness to ease political communication between different powers. His trajectory parallels that of many other imperial agents and literary figures who circulated in and out of the global territories of the Iberian monarchies and especially among other southern European powers.