Lady Jane (film)
From ArticleWorld
Lady Jane (film) was released in1986 in England and tells the story of a 16 year old Jane Grey who was crowned queen of England for nine days. It was a somewhat inaccurate account of the real incident in the history of England and the story runs more like a costume drama than a period piece. The movie falls into all the predictable traps of – cardboard cut out characters, sugar dripping sentimental dialogues, and the excessive pageantry of young lovers running through rural England.
The story
The powerful Duke of Northumberland who is eager to ensure the continuation of the Protestant Rule begun by Henry VIII hatches a plot to keep Henry's daughter Mary, a Catholic, from ascending to the throne. His pawn in this plot is the unwilling 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey, a niece of Henry VIII. The Duke marries Jane to his wastrel son Guildford and manages to scheme Jane’s ascendancy to the throne, where she remains for but nine days.
After the true heir to the throne, Mary Tudor, takes over the reins of England, she is forced by machinations of powers beyond her to have both Jane and her husband Guilford beheaded at the guillotine.
The truth
Although the film is by and large able to tell the story in accurate chronological detail, the facts sometimes have been twisted to make the movie more dramatic and poignant than the facts permit.
Some facts that were twisted out of context were:
- Jane did not love her husband though in the movie she has been portrayed as being passionately in love with him.
- Jane did not get a new shilling minted; this is just some artistic license that the movie writer has used to show Jane's compassion and heart.