In 1635, Queen Dowager Maria Eleonora dispatched a letter instructing a provincial noblewoman, Margareta Lillie, to send her seventeen-year-old daughter Margareta Oxehufvud to become a Maid of Honour. Lillie had been visiting Stockholm, but was now bound for her estates. Lillie acceded to the request and promised to send her daughter to the Queen Dowager. Then the Queen arranged transport for young Margareta Oxehufvud to come to court together with her mother. Six months later the girl's father invited the Queen to the double marriage of Oxehufvud's sisters. The Queen was indisposed, but instead asked a highly aristocratic woman, Countess Beata Brahe, to act as her stand-in at the wedding. In 1637, Oxehufvud herself married a well-established and successful courtier almost 20 years her senior: a widower who had been married to another Maria Eleonora's Maids of Honour. Oxehufvud's brother some years later was given a position as a courtier, and her own daughter would serve as Maid of Honour at a one of the lesser royal or satellite courts. The following year, Maria Eleonora approached another mother in similar fashion and got her to send her daughter to serve as Maid of Honour to Queen Christina. The Queen Dowager promised to care for her and look after her affairs, taking on a parental role.

This seems to have been the standard way to recruit noblewomen to serve at the Swedish court, as will be seen. At least formally the initiative came from a queen, though naturally behind that ritual negotiation may have been a reality of families pressing the Queen to accept a member into service. It is also telling that the transactions were between queens and mothers, without the fathers being involved.