Katharine Howard is introduced in the first book as a devout Roman Catholic, impoverished, young noblewoman escorted by her fiery cousin Thomas Culpeper.

William Gass states, in the afterword to the 1986 edition, that Ford takes great liberties with historical evidence, even into the improbable, inventing much of the dialogue and settings.

[3] Alan Judd, in his 1991 biography of the author, states that this version does not "hinder the sense of reality" in its effective style portraying a contrivance of Tudor English.

[5] In his biography of the author, Alan Judd also compares it to a film in how it creates "static scenes" that suggest "power, fear, sex, longing, guile and fate.

[7] On the back cover, Greene concludes that this may be one of Ford's "three great novels" (The Fifth Queen trilogy, The Good Soldier, and Parade's End) that may stand the test of time "compared with most of the work of his successors.