SOURCE: Prochaska, Frank. “The Many Faces of Lady Jane Grey.” History Today 35 (October 1985): 34-40.

In the following essay, Prochaska examines the way Grey has been portrayed over the centuries by writers and historians, showing how her legend has taken on new dimensions with successive generations.

The story of lady Jane Grey, the ‘traitor-heroine of the Reformation’, is perhaps the most poignant personal tragedy in British political history. The grand-daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary and eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, this unworldly though resolute girl was flattered, favoured, and ultimately butchered on the block of political expediency. In a more settled age she probably would have lived a quiet, privileged life in the service of her family and her religion. She might have remained unscathed in the turbulent politics of the mid-sixteenth century but for the recklessness of her parents and the ambition...