Windsor, England was once a historic town in Berkshire, on the River Thames, about 20 miles west of London. It is incredibly famous because of the Windsor Castle which has been around since the 11th century and was a key symbol of the British Monarchy. By the 1800s, it became a pinnacle for royal pageantry that was strongly linked with King George III, George the IV, and Queen Victoria. During Shelley’s time, people would have thought about Windsor in the context of royalty and stability. It was highly esteemed due to its endurance at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Windsor filled people with a sense of pride and offered a pleasant contrast from other historical places like Manchester and Birmingham (which had become crowded and polluted over time).

In Volume III, Chapter II the audience is given insight into Victor’s pilgrimage into Windsor, along with Oxford, Cumberland, and Matlock. Shelley includes this the preface Victor’s journey to Scotland to make a companion for the Creature. This is striking because this setting would have grounded the novel. Adding the realism in this Gothic, English horror adds a new level of fear and a sharp contrast to Victor's character. Windsor, which was a pillar of stability and order, is added to this portion of the story to show the dissimilarity with Victor's character. The pastoral setting around Windsor allowed Shelley to use the romantic landscape description as a backdrop for her themes of creation, destruction, and human ambition.

Unlike some regions of Britain associated with violent displacement, Windsor does not have a history of genocide. It was not a site of mass killing or ethnic displacement. Its importance in the novel was supposed to be symbolic and cultural, not tied to violence. However, the British Empire in the 1800’s was directly associated with genocidal and colonial practices against Indigenous persons in Australia, North America, and parts of Africa. While the castle itself can be associated with violence, enslavement, and oppression, there is not record of a genocide in Windsor itself. That being said, it allows the readers to question Shelley's intention of putting this location in the novel. They are lead to ask if Shelley was calling out the colonial violence and oppression that was seen during the time as a symbolic trait of Victor's hunger to be Godlike; or, if the beauty of Windsor was simply just to contrast his character.

https://www.worldhistory.org/uploads/images/11555.jpg?v=1669616642-0

https://www.britannica.com/place/Windsor-England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Castle