The local Catholic church had successfully disallowed women from the pleasant pastime of predicting births, the outcomes of war, and who would marry whom. Traditional divination practices led to the Inquisition visiting you, and these were not people with a sense of humor. At the same time, the local castle artists started painting playing cards to amuse the lonely and bored females. They'd decorate the cards with people that the women knew through court life. They could sit together and ostensibly be playing whist, while in actuality, they'd be shuffling and picking out cards to decide if John was going to have an affair with Mary, and if Robert would come back from the war alive.
Women are savvy creatures.
Some of these men also had ideas that could bring the humorless Inquisition to your castle. Well, it didn't take long for these men to figure out that the women had a pretty good idea. They contacted the castle artist and asked for cards to be painted to their specifications, with certain key symbols in each. In those days objects had meanings, much like hieroglyphics. An educated person looking at various objects in a picture could read a message.