She may have been the inspiration for aspects of the character Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate and of Muriel in Harold Acton's The Soul's Gymnasium (1982).

Members of the Keppel family thought her biological father was William Beckett, subsequently 2nd Baron Grimthorpe, a banker and MP for Whitby.

[4][5] The two women both wrote fictional accounts that referred to this love affair (Challenge by Sackville-West, and Broderie Anglaise, a roman à clef in French by Trefusis).

Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson wrote the non-fiction Portrait of a Marriage (1973), based on material from his mother's letters, and adding extensive "clarifications", including some of his father's point of view.

Aspects of Trefusis' character also featured in other novels, including Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate (1949), and Muriel in Harold Acton's The Soul's Gymnasium.

Alice Keppel, Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Denys Trefusis and Pat Dansey also left documents that referred to the affair.

In 1910, after the death of Edward VII, Mrs Keppel made her family observe a "discretion" leave of about two years before re-establishing themselves in British society.

Meanwhile, Mrs Keppel was busy arranging a marriage for Violet with Denys Robert Trefusis (1890–1929), son of Colonel Hon.

Mrs Keppel desperately tried to keep the scandal away from London, where Violet's sister, Sonia, was about to be married (to Roland Cubitt).

Violet was sent to Italy; and, from there she wrote her last desperate letters to their mutual friend Pat Dansey, having been forbidden from writing directly to Vita.

Some critics credited Trefusis with an "excellent gift of observation" and a "talent for mimicry and flair for decor in most of her books".

She featured in Cyril Connolly's The Rock Pool, in Harold Acton's The Soul's Gymnasium as Muriel, in several novels by Vita Sackville-West, and in Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography as the ravishing "Princess Sasha".

They brought out two of her novels with introductions by Lorna Sage and Lisa St Aubin de Teran, but were eventually defeated by copyright difficulties.

[citation needed] Trefusis seemed to prefer the role of the submissive and therefore fitted well with Singer, who, whip in hand, was typically dominant and in control in her relationships.

[citation needed] In 1924, Mrs Keppel bought L'Ombrellino, a large villa overlooking Florence, where Galileo Galilei had once lived.

After his death,[3] Trefusis published several novels, some in English, some in French, that she had written in her medieval "Tour" in Saint-Loup-de-Naud, Seine-et-Marne, France – a gift from Winnaretta.

[16] François Mitterrand, who later became President of the French Republic in 1981, in his chronicle La Paille & le Grain, mentions his friendship with Violet Trefusis under 2 March 1972, when he received "the telegram" informing of her death.

[11] Her ashes were placed both in Florence at the Cimitero degli Allori (The Evangelical Cemetery of Laurels), alongside the remains of her parents;[19] and in Saint-Loup-de-Naud in the monks' refectory near her tower.