Margaret of Anjou was a committed matchmaker, as Mary Ann Hookham once noted. When she praised the queen for her interest in promoting ‘the course of true love’, she spoke to the romantic sensibilities of Victorian England. Margaret would have viewed her matchmaking activities a little differently. In her time, marriage was a practical arrangement that created connections, wealth acquisition, and advancement for the individuals and families involved. In the political realm, marriage could serve dynastic purposes, and Margaret favored using it for peacemaking at the highest level. After all, her own marriage was supposed to set the seal on peace negotiations between France and England. Although affective relationships did occur, a ‘good marriage’ was one that yielded practical benefits in the form of increased wealth, power, or influence. Matchmaking was therefore a serious business. When Margaret promoted advantageous marriages, she performed an act of good ladyship – unless, of course, someone objected to the match! From her perspective, such marriages strengthened existing bonds of loyalty and service or created new ones.

Wardships were a form of patronage, and a lucrative one. When a tenant in chief died, leaving an underage child as heir, control of his or her lands reverted to the crown during the child's minority. The king could grant the child's wardship, for a substantial fee, to someone who may or may not have been the child's relative, and who was required to keep the lands intact until the heir came of age, but who in the meantime had the right to collect their income. The king also granted wardships in payment of a crown debt owed to the recipient, since marriages could be both bought and sold. A wardship allowed the holder to arrange the marriage of the heir: in effect, to sell it for whatever the market would bear. This was particularly important when the ward was an heiress, whose lands would be controlled by her husband as in the case of Isabel Ingoldesthorpe, whose wardship Margaret held.

In a patriarchal society the social and economic benefits of marriage tended to be calculated from a masculine point of view. For a man, marriage – the act of becomingmarried – would ideally ‘enhance his standing in the public world of other men’.