I like Van Alden's wife because she's hot as hell, she brained a man who she thought was threatening her husband, she's good with children, she makes her own rotgut booze, she talks like a fucking cartoon, and she's a loyal supporter of the aristocracy. What's not to love? The woman is the complete package! Plus she's married to a complete god damn lunatic and she doesn't complain a bit. That's like... pretty much what the fuck she expected out of life apparently. lol.
I suspect I'm in the minority, but I actually liked Margret. I totally get why most people don't care much for the Widow Schroeder. There was an awful lot of drawn out hesitation with her. But I found that gradual seduction to be entirely the point and ultimately her utter rejection of the temptation to be one of the few happy endings we've gotten in the series. Happy for the people that like her because she finally did right... happy for the people that hate her because I can't think we'll see alotof her upcoming. We'll see some, I imagine -- but not like it has been. My guess is she got moved from the starring cast to the support cast.
Edit for Gwen: Yeah, Gillian is that. She's also got a lot of good qualities. As many as she has bad, I'd say. No one in the entire show is what you'd call a "good person", not a single one of them. Of them all, Gillian has had the life chosen for her most blatantly. She's a lot of things, many of them bad. Don't be so fast to dismiss one of them is that she's a victim of her own life. Completely tragic. It's not because she doesn't deserve to die -- shit, the show is about people that do deserve to die. James knew it.