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.
[1] Having sent envoys to Cordoba on a regular basis to pay tribute, in 974 she precipitated a crisis, apparently intentionally,[citation needed] when her ambassadors said to Caliph al-Hakam II something so offensive that they were expelled and the translator punished.
The besieging troops were reinvigorated by the arrival of Elvira and her nephew Ramiro III, who then took overall control and led an attack on the city.
As an apparent result of this military defeat, Elvira retired from the court, being replaced as regent by her sister-in-law the Dowager Queen Teresa in 975.
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 coalition in resisting Córdoba, and only losing her position as a consequence of a military fiasco.