Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham

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Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham (b. 1842), is the matriarch of the Crawley family by her marriage to the late Earl of Grantham and a relative of the MacClare Family via her niece and goddaughter, Susan MacClare, Marchioness of Flintshire. She is the mother of Robert Crawley, the 7th Earl of Grantham, and of Lady Rosamund Painswick (née Crawley), and the grandmother of Robert and his wife Cora's three daughters: Mary, Edith, and Sybil. Through her granddaughters she has three great-grandchildren: Mary's son George, Sybil's daughter Sybbie, and Edith's daughter Marigold.

She is played by Maggie Smith.