Ruggiero is a leading character in the Italian romantic epics Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. Ruggiero had originally appeared in the twelfth-century French epic Aspremont, reworked by Andrea da Barberino as the chivalric romance Aspramonte. In Boiardo and Ariosto's works, he is supposed to be the ancestor of Boiardo and Ariosto's patrons, the Este family of Ferrara, and he plays a major role in the two poems.

Orlando Innamorato is an epic poem written by the Italian Renaissance author Matteo Maria Boiardo. The poem is a romance concerning the heroic knight Orlando (Roland). It was published between 1483 and 1495.