My yellow girl in a heartbeat
Phone call far too difficult
Made an appointment with death
My eyes drown in intervening days
Pray that she will close her own
Vindicate my cold, cold blood
The hood doesn't become me
An ax too heavy to bear
When it was done
There was a light
In her sightless eyes
I hadn’t seen
In so many years
No more pain
According to the will of king Henry VIII, if his children died without heirs the throne of England would pass to the descendants of his younger sister Mary. Henry's only son Edward VI (born to his 3rd wife) had been born in October 1537 and was 9 when his father died. Mary's daughter Frances, wife of Henry Grey (later duke of Suffolk), was the lady of the privy chamber to Henry's final, 6th, wife Catherine Parr, and her daughter Jane was born in the same month as Edward. The widow Catherine married Sir Thomas Seymour, who also gained wardship of Jane and sought her betrothal to Edward. However, Seymour was beheaded for treason in 1549. The duke of Northumberland, the power behind the throne, arranged for Jane's marriage to his son Guildford Dudley and for Edward to recognize Jane as his heir, shortly before young Edward's death on 6 July 1553. However, after a 9-day reign, 16-year-old Jane was deposed in favor of Henry's oldest daughter Mary I, who had been disinherited due to her Catholic faith in the wake of Henry's ecclesiastic independence. Jane and Guildford were imprisoned, and Northumberland was beheaded. After Henry Grey joined Sir Thomas Wyatt's unsuccessful rebellion, Jane's fate was sealed. On 12 February 1554, after watching Guildford's decapitation, Jane was executed in the Tower of London.
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