On the novel's title page and on its original cover, Moorcock calls Gloriana a romance and, indeed, its setting and characters resemble those of that popular literary genre of the Medieval and Renaissance periods—an imagined time of quests, jousts, and masques.

Gloriana's Thane of Hermiston has travelled to some of them, and Albion has been visited from other spheres by such as Cagliostro and Adolphus Hiddler, an Austrian who claimed to have conquered his own world.

Similar to the castle-city of Gormenghast, Gloriana's palace is riddled with abandoned chambers, apartments, hallways, passages, balconies, stairways, and caverns—"the walls"—within which live an underground community of runaways, escapees, and vagrants.

Where Elizabeth was cool, self-controlled, and pragmatic, kind-hearted Gloriana is often overwhelmed by loneliness and despair, a slave to passions she can neither renounce or satisfy.

By day a serene and benevolent monarch, by night the lonely queen is a bisexual adventurer who seeks release in all manner of debauchery but is always anorgasmic, perhaps due to Hern's aforementioned sexual abuse.

Described as "intelligent and warm", Una is a cheerful, adventurous noblewoman from the far north who bears at least a passing resemblance to Mary Queen of Scots.

Montfallcon's sole purpose in life is to keep Gloriana's Albion free of tyranny and corruption but, in so doing, he repeats the worst practices of Hern's henchmen.

Finally Quire exits the walls and claims the role of Gloriana's court champion, later her lord chancellor, and ultimately her lover—threatening her place as sovereign and symbol of Albion.

Due to strong friendship with stalwart anti-pornography feminist Andrea Dworkin, he later altered the ending to reflect contemporary feminist-inflected comprehension of women's sexuality and eroticism.

Two of the Gloriana tracks ("Inglesborough"and "Montfallcon") were reworked with additional musicians and appeared on the Spirits Burning CD Alien Injection, also released in 2008.