Margaret Paston

Margaret Paston was a fifteenth-century Norfolk gentlewoman and one of the principal writers represented in the Paston Letters. She managed estates, finances, servants and legal disputes during her husband’s absences, and her correspondence gives an unusually detailed view of family strategy and domestic resilience during the Wars of the Roses.

In Anne O’Brien’s The Royal Game, Margaret Paston manages households and estates while her husband pursues legal business; Elizabeth Paston confronts the use of marriage as an instrument of family strategy; and Anne Haute becomes connected to the next generation’s ambitions. In Anne O’Brien’s A Marriage of Fortune, the Pastons have lost possession of Caister Castle, and Margaret Paston must preserve the family’s position while civil conflict makes every alliance uncertain.