The film is set in just one night when the injured Henry VIII arrives at a manor house closed for the season.

[citation needed] In an Irish Post interview, Walsh said “Often you can find out more about someone in a small time frame rather than you can if the two-hour film spans their whole life.

Principal photography commenced in October 1996 at Charlton House in south London, making it the only film about Henry VIII entirely shot in the borough where he was born: Greenwich.

In an interview with newspaper The Greenwich Visitor (page 5), Walsh discussed how he wanted his depiction of Henry VIII to be more grounded and less like those portrayals from Hollywood.

In an interview about the project for the BBC, John Walsh explained: Every frame of film was scanned in high definition at Premier and had more than 10,000 particles removed by hand by the restoration team.

[9] In 2014 the Radio Times film critic Jeremy Aspinall called it "a fascinating, haunting little gem, with a richly nuanced performance from McKenna".

"[13] The Movie Waffler gave the film four stars for the main feature and four stars for the DVD extras, saying “McKenna is the beating heart of Monarch, part wounded bear, part Augustus Gloop petulance.” It adds “This menacingly pessimistic view of British history and government is an immensely entertaining gothic melodrama, the creepy details that Walsh weaves into the film.”[14]