In the novel By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Great-aunt Primrose was an elderly relative of Tuppence Beresford. She was very hard to please. When moving to a new retirement home she was usually very satisfied for the first couple of days, only to leave it in anger a short while later. In one year she changed homes eleven times.
After this she wrote to her niece and told her that she had met a very nice young orphaned young man. She had rented a flat in Aberdeen, and they would live there and she would support him. She was also going to make provisions in her will for Mervyn, if she predeceased him. Tuppence rushed to Scotland to talk Primrose out of it, but Mervyn had already been taken by the police.
Aunt Primrose was "highly indignant" at first, and thought that Mervyn was being persecuted. However, after attending the Court proceedings, and seeing that twenty-five other cases were taken into account, she was forced to change her mind.