My Lady Jane, a new series landing on Prime Video, is the latest in a steadily continuing trend in historical fiction television. Taking a historical figure of some significance, such as Dick Turpin or Catherine the Great, and retelling or fictionally expanding their life stories through the lens of anachronistic comedy. Some became wildly successful, like The Great and Our Flag Means Death, others, like Dickinson and The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, didn’t get the notice they perhaps deserved. While the idea is not new, it has undeniably been en vogue for a good couple of years now.

The aim of these shows has never been to give the audience an accurate retelling of events, while some facts from the basic to the surprising are on display. The priority is to entertain the audience and maybe get them interested in the true story, but in some cases, such as in My Lady Jane, people might be let down a bit by the truth. My Lady Jane is a fictional, alternate-universe retelling of the trials and tribulations of Lady Jane Grey.

The great-granddaughter Henry VII, who won The War of the Roses to claim the throne of England, and great-niece of Henry VIII, and most famously Queen of England for a little over a week. The Nine-Day Queen is one of those little-known historical tragediesnot counted in the list of English monarchs that British schoolchildren are made to remember. Needless to say, this free-spirited, dagger-wielding version we’ll see in My Lady Jane is far removed from who she was in history, but despite its brevity, there is a fascinating story about those nine days and beyond.

Who Was the Real Lady Jane Grey?

Having a direct connection to the royal family, Lady Jane Grey lived a life of immense privilege. As with many historical figures, her exact date of birth has been contested by many historians, but the year of birth is generally agreed to be 1537. According to Eric Ives’ Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery, she was brought up with a love of learning, picking up multiple languages, and being educated in subjects like classical philosophy. She lived the life of many noble girls, with all the finery and spare time a girl could ask for, moving through courtly life in the hopes of marrying well.

While being related to the king, the idea of succession would be of no concern to her. After all, there was already a son and heir lined up to take the crown, Edward VI, and after that, there was the matter of his two half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, whose claim to the throne was reinstated with the Third Succession Act of 1544. So it was smooth sailing for Jane. She married Lord Guildford Dudley in 1533, and all they needed to do was sit back and watch their first cousin Edward lead England into the future.

Fate and irony had other plans. After Henry’s multiple marriages and attempts at creating a male heir, Edward VI died at the age of 15 after a disastrous and extremely short reign as king. Lying on his deathbed, he redrafted the rules of succession, not wanting the Protestant reign of the Tudors to end with his Catholic half-sister. In his ‘devise for the succession’, he passed over both Elizabeth and Mary, and with no male Protestant heirs to give the crown to, Lady Jane Grey became Queen of England on the 10th of July 1553.

The Reign, Death, and Afterlife of Lady Jane Grey.

Grey was sixteen years old when this opportunity fell on her lap, and despite the life expectancy being only 42, it wasn’t something Jane had been preparing for her whole life. Someone who was preparing for the monarchy was Mary Tudor, who was quite unhappy to learn that her rightful position had been snatched from right under her. While Jane anxiously awaited her coronation, Mary was starting to amass an army of followers. According to historians Wilbur Kitchener Jordan and Geoffrey Elton, those on Mary’s team were a blend of those wanting to squash Protestantism with a Roman Catholic queen and those who genuinely believed Mary was the rightful heir over Jane, regardless of religious differences. After all, she was Henry’s first daughter by Catherine of Aragon, and she had the vote of the people and the rather sudden support of the Privy Council of England.

It took only nine days, as Grey anxiously waited in the Tower of London, for Mary to depose her on the 19th of July 1553. In an instant, before any of the finer details of her sudden ascendancy could be sorted out, the reign of Queen Jane was over. Despite the bloody legacy Mary would leave, she was reluctant to execute her first cousin and her husband. After all, the two had gotten in her way by no fault of their own, on the throne by a fluke thanks to the machinations of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. So they were effectively on house arrest for several months after the incident. However, while Jane herself did nothing wrong, as the Wyatt Rebellion began in response to her rule, Mary saw her presence as too much of a threat. She and her husband were beheaded on the 12th of February 1554. Jane Grey was 17.

Her life may have been short, but the life and death of Lady Jane Grey have been subject to many artistic renditions, such as the one painted by Paul Delaroche in 1833. This young woman is almost delicately led to the chopping block as her handmaiden faints in the background. Mark Twain also used her as a minor character in The Prince and the Pauper, and her tragic tale has been put on screen many times. She was played by Helena Bonham Carter in 1986’s Lady Jane, and Bella Ramsey in the short-lived 2022 series Becoming Elizabeth.The legacy of Lady Jane Grey has been contested for centuries after. Was she a Protestant martyr? A plotting usurper? The contemporary idea of her has been neatly slotted into the club of tragic, young female monarchs taken from this world by no ill of their own. Stripped of much of their agency due to their gender, they are taken along for the ride, helpless to stop the actions of powerful men that doomed so many. While certain examples of this cultural idea are dicey, the Tudor era is full of tragic female figures that people sympathize with deeply today. Lady Jane Grey is undeniably one of them.

My Lady Jane is available to stream on Prime Video.