Windsor is a royal residence and a point of encounter between court power and private lives in the novel. Queen Anne’s summons draws Josiana from London to Corleone Lodge, placing her within reach of the queen’s commands; later, Windsor’s monumental architecture becomes the setting for Gwynplaine’s bewildered search for an exit. Its significance lies in this contrast: a place that promises royal protection and splendour can also feel like a prison to someone unaccustomed to its power.

A Royal Destination

Windsor enters the novel as part of the court’s geography. Queen Anne’s travels between London and Windsor are swift enough to be measured against the speed of her carriage: her teams and relays sometimes cover the distance in less than an hour and a quarter. The detail makes Windsor not a remote retreat but a readily accessible extension of royal authority. The queen’s reach is reinforced by the fact that Josiana’s residence there lies close to Windsor Castle, keeping the duchess near the sovereign even when she is not in the royal presence.

Windsor is also associated with the queen’s appetite for spectacle. Anne is described as being charmed by a proposal for a London theatre equipped with elaborate machinery, with an under-stage finer than that of Louis XIV’s theatre. The proposal concerns London rather than Windsor, but it helps define the courtly culture connecting the two places: royal taste, entertainment, display, and the rapid movement of people and plans around the queen. Windsor belongs to that same orbit of command and fashionable magnificence.

Corleone Lodge and the Court’s Reach

Josiana’s Windsor residence is Corleone Lodge, a Florentine-style palace of brick and stone, with a marble colonnade, built on piles at the head of the wooden bridge. Its court is described as among the finest in England. The palace’s splendour is not merely decorative: its position near Windsor Castle places Josiana within the queen’s reach, and the court setting makes that proximity an instrument of power as much as a privilege. Josiana likes the residence despite its closeness to the sovereign.

That proximity becomes practical when the queen sends a postchaise belonging to the royal household to bring Josiana from Hunkerville House in London to Windsor. Josiana would have preferred to delay her departure, but court life allows no such objection. She leaves at once, at the very moment officials arrive at the Tadcaster Inn to arrest Gwynplaine and take him to the torture cell at Southwark. The narrative places these movements side by side: the duchess is summoned into royal custody of a kind, while Gwynplaine is seized by the law. Both are moved by institutions that leave little room for personal choice, though the forms and stakes of their confinement differ sharply.

On reaching Windsor, Josiana is told by the Usher of the Black Rod that Queen Anne is occupied with the Lord Chancellor and will not receive her until the following day. She must remain at Corleone Lodge and await the queen’s commands. Josiana arrives already knowing that Lord David Dirry-Moir is expected at Windsor the next day, having been ordered back from sea to receive the queen’s instructions. Kept waiting in her own palace, she suppers in a bad humour, dismisses her attendants, and goes to bed while it is still daylight. Windsor thus gathers royal authority, enforced attendance, and private anticipation into one tightly controlled setting.

The Palace as a Labyrinth

The Windsor sequence also presents a palace interior on a scale that overwhelms Gwynplaine. He wakes in a chamber lined from floor to ceiling with purple velvet. Two tables stand within reach: one holds papers and a casket; the other, a cold fowl, wine, and brandy on a silver-gilt salver. Through a high window, the night reveals a courtyard enclosed by pillars and served by three iron gates: a great central entrance for carriages, a smaller one for equestrians, and a still smaller passage for pedestrians. Sculpture rises above the central gate; beyond it, terraces and stairs, a broad roof, tower-like chimneys, and statues crowd the view.

The grounds continue the same language of cultivated abundance. A fountain spills from basin to basin beyond the colonnade, while rows of windows, sculpted panoplies, busts, trophies, and figures of heathen deities animate the building’s exterior. In daylight, the paving’s mosaic would reveal a vast, colourful coat of arms. These details make Windsor’s splendour legible as an organized display of rank: heraldry, architecture, and controlled entrances turn inherited power into something visible at every scale.

For Gwynplaine, however, splendour does not offer ease. He wanders through rooms that seem to have no end, unable to find an exit; each magnificent object appears to impede his passage. Heated air keeps the building at a summer temperature, carpets cover its floors, and currents of perfume pass through it, yet comfort only intensifies his sense of confinement. He calls for someone and receives no answer. The palace is warm, silent, and deserted, its luxury producing the disorientation of an enchanted labyrinth rather than welcome.

Views, Distance, and Confinement

The windows offer Gwynplaine a succession of distinct views: gardens, a statue-filled plot, and a small Spanish-style patio that appears cold and neglected. At times he sees the Thames; at others, a great tower identified as Windsor. The changing prospect establishes the palace’s scale and its connection to the surrounding place, but it does not guide him out. Even when the landscape supplies recognizable landmarks, the interior remains a maze.

Gwynplaine keeps repeating Dea’s name as though it could serve as the thread leading him through the labyrinth. That gesture sets Windsor’s material abundance against the bond he wants to recover: the palace surrounds him with objects, warmth, and architecture, while his thoughts turn toward the person from whom he is separated. In this episode Windsor’s splendour is therefore double-edged. It displays the resources of aristocratic life, yet from Gwynplaine’s perspective those resources become barriers, and the royal world that appears open and magnificent closes around him.