The novelist Margaret Atwood suggests that the good stories about people that make up our culture,

Love and forgiveness seem to have been in short supply in the life of Perchta, one of the Rožmberk sisters, but this lack is made up for in an abundance of long-suffering, avarice, truth, lies, disguises, and revelations. According to Atwood’s components, Perchta’s story represents a near-universal human condition. She responded to her difficult circumstances by reaching for strength within herself and for charity and redemption among her kin and friends.

The correspondence of Anéžka and Perchta of Rožmberk is significant for a number of reasons. The much more voluminous letters of Perchta illustrate how a medieval woman coped with personal unhappiness in a social system which gave her little power, teaching her to do what her father, brothers, and husband expected of her. Her letters reveal to us a woman determined to change the conditions of her bad marriage. They uncover a strategy which acknowledged the social norms founded on women’s alleged inferiority. At the same time, Perchta’s self-respect drove her to subvert attitudes of feminine acquiescence. She unceasingly sent letters to her father, brothers, and nephew compelling them to take note of her situation and gaining their intervention. Her letters show what a person can do in a culture in which one half of the population declares the other half as subordinate and incapable. The letters of both sisters offer insights into the hopes, joys, and vexations of fifteenth-century women. They also introduce the reader to the environment and the activities of daily castle life, ranging from Anéžka’s pride in hunting to petty squabbles among servants. The letters also offer a detailed picture of family life in the fifteenth century. They describe the family both as a place of affection between Perchta, her father, and her siblings, but the letters also show the family to be a setting for discord and deception which the Lichtenštejn household represented for Perchta.