This is an account of the lives of aristocratic Anglo-Irish women in late medieval and early modern Ireland. It is an in-depth cross-generational exploration of the lives of those women born or married into the house of Ormond. It is underpinned by an assessment of their individual and collective significance in negotiating the preservation and advancement of that dynasty's political, landed, economic and social interests, from the chronic instability of the Wars of the Roses, through the vicissitudes of the Tudor, Stuart, Commonwealth and Restoration eras. In gauging the relative significance of the Ormond women's experiences and contributions, their roles in both private dynastic and wider public circles are explored within the wider interpretative context of aristocratic families elsewhere in Ireland, England and France.

The cross-generational approach allows for a chronological and comparative examination of all aspects of each of these women's lives, roles and contributions (private, public, social, economic, confessional and political) which is intimately intertwined with analysis of the wider Butler family's changing political fortunes, succession challenges, shifting dynastic alliances, and financial difficulties over the course of two centuries of profound change and periodic upheaval in Ireland.