Baynard’s Castle matters in the novel as a point of reference in the disputed history of Katherine of Aragon’s first marriage. Recalled alongside Windsor and Ludlow, it links a royal wedding and household routine to the later political and legal campaign over whether Katherine’s marriage to Henry VIII was valid.

Setting and Royal Household

The castle appears in a retrospective account of the places where attendants served Arthur and Katherine after their wedding. The royal couple were first at Baynard’s Castle, then at Windsor, and later at Ludlow, where they were sent to live as Prince and Princess of Wales. The sequence makes the castle part of a changing royal itinerary rather than an isolated setting.

Place in the Annulment Case

In 1529, as the king’s Great Matter approached a hearing before the legatine court, Henry’s case depended in part on testimony about Katherine’s earlier marriage to Arthur. The king intended to show that Katherine had consummated that marriage before marrying him. To support the claim, witnesses were being gathered from among the gentlemen who had attended the young couple at Baynard’s Castle and at their later residences.

The witnesses were at least a generation older, and twenty-eight years had passed. The novel therefore connects the castle not only with the couple’s past, but with the fragility of recollection when personal memory is recruited into a consequential legal proceeding.

Narrative Significance

Baynard’s Castle is named briefly, but its position at the beginning of the witness itinerary gives it a specific evidentiary role. The ordinary business of attending a royal household becomes retrospective testimony in a dispute over marriage, legitimacy, and the succession. By placing the castle beside Windsor and Ludlow, the narrative shows how places associated with Katherine and Arthur’s shared life are drawn into the effort to redefine Katherine’s status decades later.