The history of the Jacobites has been largely silent on the roles of women. There were many noteworthy Jacobite women, yet their limited appearances occur predominantly in romanticized and canonized narratives. While women of all classes contributed, what records do exist in contemporary scholarship and eighteenth-century primary sources are largely about women of the nobility such as Princess Sobieska, Lady Margaret Ogilvy, and Jane Drummond, the dowager Duchess of Perth. In the Jacobite conflicts, the nobility and the upper classes were key figures, both sides motivated by marriage alliances, family ties, and religious loyalties. In such a conflict, women could play a significant role in the domains of conventional armed war, and in the battlefields of politics and public opinion. Jacobite women made educated and independent decisions to contribute and to participate. The select few women portrayed in Female Rebels and Female Fortitude were involved in treasonous acts, armed conflict, and were part of the highly political battlefield of marriages and family ties.

Female Rebels profiles Jacobite noblewomen who were directly involved in military actions, and presents them as unfeminine, reckless, and wild, unrecognizable as members of families of noble lineage. Their presence on the battlefield is used to claim that the Jacobite armies are not proper armies. In Female Fortitude we meet Princess Clementina Sobieska (the feminine form of the family name Sobieski), positioned as a model of noble dedication to duty, and a noblewoman with links to many European royal courts, eminently suited to be a British queen. 

The battle over succession to the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland was fought as fiercely in the spaces of political intrigue and public opinion as it was on the bloody battlefields. Various European states entered the fray when it suited their own needs; and stayed out when that was what worked best for them. The noble men and women who constituted the royal courts were in the thick of clandestine communications and alliances, heavily involved in raising both armies and money, and active in devising and supporting plots.  Both sides were prolific publishers of highly opiniated works which were published and discussed widely and became hot topics of conversation at many levels of society. These books were produced as propaganda designed to add to a heavily impassioned debate about the legitimate succession to the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland. We see them today as glimpses into the multi-faceted, important, and controversial roles of a select number of Jacobite women.