Richard Helgerson suggests that Eikon Basilike represents the culmination of the representational strategies of Charles’ immediate Tudor and Stuart predecessors: the textual absolutism of King James and the "iconic performativity" of Elizabeth.
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Some later editions of the Eikon Basilike contained a sworn statement by William Levett, Esq., longtime courtier and groom of the bedchamber to the King, that Levett had witnessed Charles writing the text during the time that Levett accompanied him in his imprisonment on the Isle of Wight.
He immediately began to complain to Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, of the poverty of the see, and based claims for a better benefice on a certain secret service, which he explained in January 1661 to be the sole invention of the Eikon Basilike, The Pourtraicture of his sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings, put forth within a few hours after the execution of Charles I as written by the king himself.