My Lady Jane: The brutal truth about the UK’s infamous ‘Nine Day Queen’

A short-lived teenage monarch in Tudor history has now inspired a fantastic TV adventure on Prime Video. But as ridiculous as this sounds, it shows how the unfortunate Lady Jane Gray was much more than a victim.

Since her execution 470 years ago, Lady Jane Gray has remained in the public imagination as the ultimate victim. Barely 16 years old when she was thrust onto the English throne by her ambitious father-in-law, Jane reigned for only nine days. She was then beheaded on the orders of the vengeful Queen Mary, who took the throne from her and, as the story goes, could not tolerate a rival claimant to the crown remaining alive.

This story is reinforced by the portrait of Jane, painted by Paul Delaroche in 1833 and on permanent display at the National Gallery in London. Kneeling, blindfolded, dressed in white, Jane gropes for the block, an innocent lamb preparing for slaughter.

In reality, Lady Jane Gray was a much more complex character. The great-niece of Henry VIII, she was “a pretty abrasive person,” suggests Dr. Samantha Rogers, who teaches Tudor history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “She was also austere and pious. I suppose I wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with her.”

However, during her short life, Lady Jane Gray demonstrated a lot of action, to use modern parlance. Queen Mary was initially willing to pardon Jane after she was tried and found guilty of treason, but Jane continued to be an outspoken Protestant – fiercely opposed to Mary’s reintroduction of the Catholic mass in England – which contributed greatly to sealing his fate.

On a page of the prayer book she carried to the scaffold, now in the British Library collectionshe wrote a heartfelt message to her father, urging him not to mourn her execution as well as that of her husband Guildford Dudley: “Have faith that we, in leaving this mortal life, have gained an immortal life.”

But neither this Lady Jane Gray – strong and fearless, willing to die for what she believed – nor the familiar passive victim is the heroine of My Lady Jane. The eight-part miniseries, broadcast from June 27 on Prime Video, imagines a Jane so different from the real Jane to the point of being ridiculous. She is played by American actress Emily Bader as a fiery 21st century girl immersed in the Tudor world: debauched, irreverent and determined to live her life and love whoever she wants. God never enters there. This Jane also talks like a Valley Girl and frolics with friends who have the magical ability to transform into animals.

In truth, My Lady Jane owes little to the past and almost everything to the burning center of the present. Romance – a blend of romance and fantasy – is the fastest growing genre of contemporary fiction among young female readers. Television producers once made miniseries from meticulously researched historical fiction; Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall comes to mind. But Netflix The Bridgerton Chronicle, based on the novels by Julie Quinn, exploits the popularity of love stories set in an alternate past. In this hit show, George III’s biracial wife, Queen Charlotte – there’s a debate between historians The actress, who lived through a period of African descent in real life, presides over a regency society where racial equality is well established. Viewers can enjoy the venerable thrill of the Jane Austen-style romantic chase (complete with extravagant, not always period-appropriate costumes) with all the troubling aspects of the period erased.

One imagines that Mantel, who died in 2022, would be notably unimpressed by Bridgerton and My Lady Jane, adapted from a bestselling young adult novel by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand and Jodi Meadows. In her Reith Lecture 2017 for the BBCMantel said: “This is a persistent difficulty for women writers, (they) want to write about women of the past, but can’t help but retrospectively empower them. What is wrong.

To be fair, My Lady Jane is so largely comedic that the creators’ indifference to the facts is never in doubt. And the historian Nicola Tallis, who in 2016 published an acclaimed biography of Jane, Crown of Blood, forgives them. “We have to remember that there is a lot we don’t know about Jane,” Tallis told the BBC. “Which in turn provides a relative degree of freedom when crafting a television narrative. What we TO DO What I do know is that she was incredibly strong-minded, and I think it’s quite refreshing to see her presented in a way that seeks to highlight that. We should celebrate her as a young woman who wasn’t afraid to raise her voice in a man’s world. »

Tallis echoes a broader point about the appeal of romantic content. When asked to explain this phenomenon, the president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, Professor Jayasheee Kamblé, told the BBC: “This type of reimagining is a way of wresting female action to the death and silence that dominate so much of the world. ”

TV Jane has no problem challenging authority. When Dudley, a man she has never met, is introduced as a potential husband, she rejects any idea of ​​marriage, saying, “I want my life to be mine, forever.” It is only when she accidentally meets the man, played by Edward Bluemel, in a tavern, and discovers that he is very attractive (another, less polite term is used) that she will consider marriage.

In My Lady Jane, any mention of the questions of faith so central to Lady Jane Grey’s life is entirely absent. The English Reformation, which began with Henry VIII’s decision to break with Rome to divorce his wife, caused civil unrest for decades – with the clash between the Catholic Queen Mary and the Protestant Lady Jane only ‘only one chapter. But the writers, by stirring up animosity between the Ethians (those magical people who can turn into animals) and the Truthies (everyone else), are making a gesture against the violent religious conflict of the 1500s.

This is perhaps the silliest part of a very silly show – even if the visual effects are impressive. Mantel, in his Reith Lectures, recognized how difficult it is for those of us living today to appreciate the religiosity of our ancestors. For them, she said, “this life was short and hard. Its goal was salvation. The sole goal of salvation permeated their thinking and governed their day-to-day actions.”

Despite all that is added and left out – as well as distorted, ridiculed and devalued – about the life of her noble subject, Dr. Rogers says she plans to connect to My Lady Jane. “I might watch it with a fellow historian while we laugh and enjoy a glass of wine.” Dr Tallis hopes the series will spark renewed interest in the teenage martyr. “My feeling is that if alternative history engages people enough to encourage them to go off and discover the real story, then that’s a good thing. If it’s accepted as fact, it becomes problematic.”

There seems to be little danger for the second. Even the less Tudor-savvy among us will recognize My Lady Jane as a fun, frothy tune – and perhaps sing along, as heavily costumed riders ride through the verdant forests of England, to a soundtrack of Wild Thing and Rebel, Rebel. If that sounds appealing to you, go ahead and get in the saddle.

Clare McHugh is the author of The Romanov wives, published by Harper Collins. My Lady Jane is broadcast from June 27 on Prime Video.