A Vindication is short and offers scant biographical detail, but An Historical Narrative of the German Princess (1663) and The Case of Madame Mary Carleton (1663), both attributed to Mary herself, amply supply it. The Case in particular offers a romantic tale of an orphaned heiress, whose difficulties are matched only by her resourcefulness. Raised and educated in a convent, young Maria flees to take possession of her estate in Cologne rather than becoming a nun. When two horrible suitors refuse to leave her alone — one is a wheezy old soldier, the other a Faust-like student of the dark arts — she again flees, this time to England, winding up at the Exchange tavern by chance. There, she becomes the victim of a con, not its perpetrator. King and his in-laws, the Carletons, keep her semi-imprisoned, fearing that a courtier will hear of this rich, foreign lady and snatch her up. They set John to woo her in the guise of a Lord. (This ruse is complicated by the fact that it was only hatched after John and Mary had already met, but the Kings get around this by telling Mary that he had been in disguise as a commoner during their first encounter.) John plays his part, spinning “rhapsodies and fictions” of stately houses and ample lands. In print, Mary generously forgives her young husband these fabrications. His “castles in the air” were not really lies — after all, he truly planned to own such properties, once he got hold of her money.