Queen Margaret: The Prophetess Nobody Listens To

Margaret has no political power by the time Richard III begins. Her husband Henry VI is dead. Her son Edward of Westminster is dead. She is technically in exile but appears in Act 1 Scene 3 uninvited, standing at the edge of the court, listening to the Yorkists argue before she steps forward to curse them.

Her curses are specific. She names each person and assigns each a fate. Richard will outlive his glory and die at the hands of someone he trusts. Hastings, Rivers, Dorset, Buckingham: she goes through the list. Nobody takes her seriously. They are wrong to dismiss her, and the play makes sure you watch each curse come true.

She returns in Act 4 Scene 4 to sit with the widowed Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York (three women who have all lost sons to the same dynastic violence) in a scene of collective grief that has no equivalent elsewhere in Shakespeare's histories. She has been saying it would end this way since Act 1. The satisfaction she takes in being right is one of the most honest responses in the play.