‘My Lady Jane’ Is for the Book Girlies, and There’s More Where It Came From
In case you didn’t get the memo, My Lady Jane, a new romantasy series set in Tudor England, is a jamboree you do not want to miss out on. The series created by Gemma Burgess stars Emily Bader and Edward Bluemel, and all eight episodes of its first season are available to stream on Prime Video.
So why is everyone crushing so hard on My Lady Jane?
Well, you can blame the brouhaha on the book girlies (which includes yours truly). We love a good marriage of convenience trope where there is secret, irresistible attraction. And we will ship the hell out a lead pair that can give us chemistry that would make us swoon. Bonus: My Lady Jane is historical fiction but one that likes to give its story a good feminist twist, and add some sugar, spice, and magic to it.
What’s My Lady Jane about?
Lady Jane Grey, a noblewoman in 1553 England was smart and thoughtful but ended up dead because politics is a b***h. Lady Jane is the cousin of King Edward VI (son of Jane Seymour. Yep, his daddy was King Henry VIII, who married Anne Boleyn), who died at 15 years of age and named Jane as his successor as she was a Protestant.
However, there was growing support for his cousin, Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragorn, and a Catholic. In merely nine days after her ascension to the throne of Britain and Ireland, Queen Jane was dethroned, and Queen Mary I was the new queen. Jane and her husband were executed by beheading.
My Lady Jane is a reimagining of Lady Jane Grey’s life, changing up a few things. The tensions between Catholics and Protestants are given a magical twist, represented as tension between Verities (pure humans) and Ethians (humans who can transform into an anima at will, but can’t control which animal form they take). Edward VI’s ailment, assumed IRL to be tuberculosis, is called “The Affliction”—a mysterious illness that mimics TB’s symptoms.
Oh, and this is a romance now, and Jane Grey has a spicy love life. Fun, amirite? (Read our review!)
Is My Lady Jane Based on a Book?
Such a delicious premise, no wonder there’s a book behind it all! My Lady Jane is adapted from the first novel in a series of books written by Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows, and Cynthia Hand. The series is called The Lady Janies, which includes three books based on a feminist and uproarious reclaiming of the stories of three Janes that we know from history.
The first one is, of course, My Lady Jane, based on Lady Jane Grey from Tudor England. The second is My Plain Jane, which reimagines Jane Eyre, with characters like author Charlotte Brontë herself written in! The third is called My Calamity Jane, based on the gunslinger and frontierswoman from the 1870s Wild West America, Calamity Jane.
Who is in My Lady Jane?
Emily Bader plays Jane Grey (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin), with Edward Bluemel (Killing Eve, A Discovery of Witches) as Guildford, the swoon-worthy stranger she meets at a bar and uses the first pick-up like in history on.
The supporting characters are a hoot and played by Jordan Peters (King Edward VI), Anna Chancellor (Lady Frances Grey), Dominic Cooper (Chancellor Seymour), Kate O’Flynn (Mary), Rob Brydon (Lord Dudley), Abbie Hern (Bess), Isabella Brownson (Lady Katherine Grey), Henry Ashton (Lord Stan Dudley), and Robyn Betteridge (Margaret Grey).
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