[2] Vicary Gibbs, writing in The Complete Peerage in 1910, commented that he "seems only to have existed for the purpose of giving a melancholy and unneeded illustration of the truth that a man with the finest prospects, may, by the wildest folly and extravagance, as Sir Thomas Browne says, 'foully miscarry in the advantage of humanity, play away an uniterable life, and have lived in vain.

The sister-in-law, née Edith Marion Boyd, was the 4th Marquess's aunt, one of his mother's sisters, and she did not wed Coquelin's brother Gustave until 1891.

He attended Eton College, later receiving private tuition, and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

[4] Upon the death of his father on 13 October 1898, he inherited his title and the family estates with about 30,000 acres (120 km2) in Staffordshire, Dorset, Anglesey, and Derbyshire, providing an annual income of £110,000 (equivalent to £15 million per year in 2023).

In 1905, Paget died in Monte Carlo following a long illness, with his ex-wife by his side, and his remains were returned to St Edwen's Church, Llanedwen, on his Anglesey estate, for burial.

The title passed to his first cousin Charles Henry Alexander Paget, who destroyed all the papers of the 5th Marquess and converted the Gaiety Theatre back into a chapel.

It was at least in part owing to the debts left by the 5th Marquess that the family's principal English estate at Beaudesert, Staffordshire, had to be broken up and sold in the 1930s.

[13][14] In March 2020, a diamond tiara claimed to have likely been worn by the 5th Marquess in his stage productions was put up for auction by the family at the 2020 European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht.

The tiara was apparently retained after the auctions were held to repay the debts accrued by Paget, and it was later worn by Marjorie, Marchioness of Anglesey (wife of the 6th Marquess) at the coronation of King George VI in 1937.

[18][19][20] In 2017 the actor and composer Seiriol Davies wrote and performed in How To Win Against History, a musical based on Paget's life.