Lady Jane Grey lived and died during one of the most tumultuous periods in British royal history,a time of palace intrigue, shifting alliances and brutal violence.
The great-grand niece of King Henry VIII, Jane was born to ambitious aristocrats Lady Frances Brandon and Henry Grey, the Duke of Suffolk, in 1537.
To be a noblewoman in medieval England meant living a life of opulence. It also meant you were a useful pawn to your male relatives in their power plays.
John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, was one of the most powerful men in the country when he and Henry Grey began engineering a scheme to put Jane on the throne.
Though a relative of the king, the young woman's place in the royal line was inconsequential compared to her cousins, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth Tudor.
But Dudley had a plan to change that.
King Edward VI,the only son of Henry VIII, was dying of measles and tuberculosis when Dudley persuaded him to re-write the line of succession in favour of Protestant members of his family.
He skipped over his Catholic half-sister Mary, who was the heir presumptive, and declared Jane, a Protestant, and any of her male heirs, next in line to the throne.
Edward died not long after the change was made, putting Dudley's grand scheme into motion.
After denying Mary Tudor her birthright, Dudley quickly got to work securing the crown for Jane.
But he faced a major roadblock.
Despite being at the centre of her father-in-law's master plan, the prospective queen did not want the title or the trappings that came with it.
"The crown is not my right. It pleases me not. Mary is the rightful heir," Jane reportedly declared.
She eventually relented at the urging of the Duke of Northumberland, but it was a decision she would soon regret.
On July 10, Jane became queen as those closest to her jostled for power and Mary raised an army of supporters to take back the throne.
Her rule would be cut short just nine days later, when the Duke of Northumberland's scheming was put to an end by an army of Mary's supporters.
While her cousin was declared the rightful monarch, Janewas deposed, locked in a tower and beheaded on February 12, 1554.
Queen Mary I's reign would be marred by controversy, but she would be remembered as a consequential figure.
Jane, however, became a footnote in history.
A years-long game of chess
From the moment Jane was born, her parents began grooming her to be a noble woman.
As Jane was dressed in fine silks and given the best education a girl could hope for at the time — learning Greek, Latin and Italian —she endured a miserable childhood.
"When I am in the presence either of father or mother … I must do [everything] as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world," she told visiting scholar Roger Ascham.
"Or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened … sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs … that I think myself in hell."
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he stated in his will that Jane was fourth in line to the throne, dramatically improving the girl's stature within the royal court.
At the age of nine, she was sent to live in the home of Sir Thomas Seymour and his wife Catherine, so she could learn the art of being a lady.
This brief period of mere months was the happiest time in Jane's short life. Catherine was a kindly mother figure, who instilled in Jane a love of the arts and a deep Protestant faith.
But Thomas Seymour was as ambitious as Jane's parents.
Together, the three adults began a years-long game of chess, trying to manoeuvre Jane into the position of queen through marriage.
King Edward VI was roughly the same age as Jane. They were distant cousins, study buddies, and bonded over their shared commitment to the Protestant church.
While Jane's parents and Thomas Seymour pushed the match, the young king had many prospective brides.
His diary also suggests he had plans for a fortuitous marriage with a foreign-born princess who might shore up his power.
In 1551, he wrote that his bride should be "sufficiently jewelled and stuffed [with money]".
But just like Jane, Edward was surrounded by scheming adults, who were trying to use him as a pawn in their own ruthless games.
In 1549, Thomas Seymour tried to sneak into the king's apartments with a weapon — either a dagger or pistol, depending on whose account you believe.
Historians are divided on what he had planned. Some believe he intended on murdering the king. Others suspect he was going to kidnap him.
But as he crept across the palace grounds, he was startled by the boy's pet spaniel and killed the dog.
It was the loss of his beloved pet, more than his presence in the royal residence with a deadly weapon, which fractured the relationship between the monarch and his cunning advisor.
Thomas Seymour was sent to the Tower of London the next day, later convicted of treason, and executed by two blows of an axeman's weapon.
Jane's chances of marrying the king died with Thomas Seymour.
But when Edward's health took a turn and it became clear he would soon succumb to his illness, it presented a new opportunity for the ambitious adults around her.
Why should Jane settle for being the monarch's wife when she could be the one to wear the crown?
The conspiracy to put Jane on the throne
To get Jane to the peak of Tudor power, her father knew she still needed an advantageous marriage.
With Thomas Seymour dead, they lost their man on the inside.
But one of Edward's other Machiavellian advisors was the fiercely Protestant Duke of Northumberland, who was desperate to keep his plum position if the boy king died.
The heir presumptive to the throne was Edward's half-sister, Mary Tudor, a staunch Catholic, and Northumberland knew he needed to keep her off the throne to save himself.
And so, Jane was married off to Northumberland's son, Lord Guildford Dudley, in a lavish ceremony.
Edward, too ill to attend, "sent presents of rich ornaments and jewels" as wedding gifts to his cousin.
Three months later, at just 15 years old, Edward died.
Northumberland kept the king's death a secret for days as he tried to put his plan into action.
First, he summoned his daughter-in-law Jane, to his stately home outside London, where she was surprised to find her husband, parents, and members of the royal council were waiting for her.
As Northumberland announced the news Jane would rule, members of the Privy Council bent the knee for their new queen, and the overwhelmed 15-year-old fainted.
When she recovered,she reportedly refused to accept the crown.
But the pressure from her family was immense, and Jane finally relented, if— she said— "what has been given to me is lawfully mine".
Her acquiescence would trigger her downfall. Later, she would declare it the worst decision of her short life.
"It did not become me to accept," she wrote.
The next day, Jane, her husband, her parents and her mother-in-law arrived in London on a procession of barges ahead of her coronation.
It was customary for new English monarchs to stay in the Tower of London before they acceded to the throne.
Once installed in the tower, trumpets heralded the arrival of the new queen "Jane by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland".
Copies of Edward's will were pinned all over London in the hope the queen's new subjects would accept her reign.
But for years, as the boy king's condition grew worse and worse, the British people expected Mary would be the next sovereign.
Few had ever heard of this teenager called Jane.
Worse still, Mary was not about to be usurped from what she believed was her destiny.
How Mary took back the throne
Unlike Jane, whose ascension had to be explained in public letters and engineered by scheming men, Mary's claim to the English throne was clear.
As the only surviving child of King Henry VIII for many years, Mary had spent most of her childhood as the heir presumptive.
That all changed with her parents divorce, the birth of Elizabeth and a series of amendments to the succession act.
Despite her status as next-in-line being erased for a brief period, her proximity to the crown was undeniable.
By the time Edward VI ascended to the throne, Mary was back in the royal fold and considered the heir to the throne.
The descendent of a long line of female rulers, Mary had studied at the feet of a regnant queen, Catherine of Aragon, and believed she would one day rule.
A palace coup wasn't going to deter her from claiming what was hers.
After receiving a tip off that a summons to London to visit her dying brother was a ruse for Dudley's men to capture her, Mary fled to Norfolk to rally supporters.
Dudley was widely opposed within the area and blamed for the unpopular policies enacted by the government at the time.
As the Duke of Northumberland carried out his scheme, the princesssent a letter to the Privy Council, warning them that she was England's rightful heir and by supporting Jane, they were committing treason.
Mary was not someone to be trifled with, and she quickly got to work building an army to help reclaim her destiny.
It would take her just nine days to push her cousin from the throne and claim it for herself.
With a military force assembled in Suffolk, the Privy Council in London was plagued by doubts about the newly installed queen.
Their support for Dudley and Jane swiftly crumbled and the advisory council declared Mary as the rightful ruler on July 19.
Jane was deposed, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where she had previously reigned.
As the reality of her situation dawned on her, Jane reportedly denounced her father-in-law, remarking that he had "brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity and misery by his exceeding ambition".
Eager to escape a death sentence for his own role in the plot, Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, abandoned his daughter and declared his allegiance to Mary.
Jane and her husband weren't so lucky.
Despite initially being granted a reprieve from the death penalty, the pair were eventually executed after the Wyatt rebellion, a small uprising that arose in response to a plan for Mary to marry the prince of Spain.
To twist the knife even further, Jane's father was the one who sealed her fate.
His participation in the revolt had fuelled uncomfortable questions over Jane's existence and the threat it posed to Mary's rule.
So the 16-year-old was put to death, her head placed on a chopping block to ensure Mary could begin a reign so brutal, she earned herself the nickname "Bloody Mary".
The 'nine day' queen
After her death,Jane became a Protestant martyr and was widely seen as a tragic victim of a turbulent time in England's history.
However, biographer Leanda de Lisle arguesshe's been mythologised, even fetishised, as an innocent girl and reduced, over time,to"an eroticised image of female helplessness".
What makes her story unique is that her rise and fall occurred in an era when women, not men, were competing to become the monarch.
"Jane and Mary are two women, in theory, fighting it out for the throne with Elizabeth in the mix as well,"said Ellie Woodacre, who teaches renaissance history at the University of Winchester.
"You get to a point where every possible successor is a woman."
But while there has always been interest in the story of Lady Jane Grey, in some ways she's been "a footnote in history" Dr Woodacre said.
Part of the problem is that her legacy is often tied up in debates over how long she reigned and whether she counts as a genuine monarch.
"Some people would say she was never the queen at all," Dr Woodacre said.
These questions often miss the point of one of Jane's most significant legacies: the teen queen paved the way for future female monarchs.
"The door was opened for Mary to push [through] and run with it, but Jane opens that door," Dr Woodacre said.
"I think there's value in that, even if there wasn't enough time for her to promulgate a political manifesto."
Once the idea of a female monarch became normalised with the reigns of Jane, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth, it was easier for those who followed afterward.
"[Jane] kicks off a tradition of regnant queenship that is really, really significant," Dr Woodacre said.
