Rosa di Marco is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Louise Jameson from 29 January 1998 to 3 August 2000.

She is the mother of Beppe (Michael Greco), Gianni (Marc Bannerman), Teresa (Leila Birch) and Nicky di Marco (Carly Hillman).

Rosa first appears when George Palmer (Paul Moriarty) and Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor) attend her husband's funeral in January 1998 and later moves to Walford in February 1998 along with the rest of her family.

This shock leads to Gianni breaking up with George's daughter Annie Palmer (Nadia Sawalha), after fearing they had been having an incestuous affair.

Beppe then joins the rest of his family in Leicester, from where he telephones Lynne Slater (Elaine Lordan) to tell her Rosa has died and that he won't be returning to Walford.

[5] The di Marcos "landed with an almighty thud in January [1998], turning out in force for the funeral of patriarch Giuseppe", who was Rosa's husband and an old business associate of the character George Palmer (Paul Moriarty).

[6] The following month, the family moved to the area in which the soap is set, Walford, to run an Italian restaurant, which was named Giuseppe's.

[7] The di Marcos remained with the show as a unit until 2000, when the new executive producer, John Yorke, decided to cull the majority of the family.

[5] A source allegedly told The Mirror: "It is always unpleasant having to say goodbye to people who have given loyal service to the show for a number of years.

Their storylines were beginning to feel tired, and that is a good time to make such a drastic change...there is a lot of sympathy for actress Louise Jameson, because her character was two-dimensional from the start.

"[14] Years later, Jameson complained about how exit was handled, saying that she was "annoyed" by the way it was announced, adding "I was only told the night before it appeared in the papers.

In the book, the author, Rupert Smith, writes: "Nobody really knew what to do with the di Marco family, who had been languishing in the pizza restaurant without a decent storyline between them.

Rosa, who presumably owned the house she had transformed into something resembling an Imperial Palace, is suddenly prepared to leg it with a couple of suitcases?

The writers and the viewers buy into a myth that people are not particularly complex, that the full range of their feelings and actions can be revealed in a few hours on the television.

The viewers had already decided they did not much care…because of their jobs, the di Marcos became a largely self-contained unit…"[16] Tony Stewart of the Daily Mirror called Rosa "conniving".