# 2026-05-03 *My Lady Jane* — Reading Notes > Working note for Courtney's analysis of *My Lady Jane* (Hand / Ashton / Meadows, 2016) under the `fiction` skill ("Work the Novel" system). Each prompt appends a new section. All citations point to seed passage IDs (`MLJ-####`) in `[[The Lady Janies — My Lady Jane — Seed Passages]]`. --- ## 📚 Readwise Ingestion Summary **No Readwise highlights existed at session start.** Per the `fiction` skill's graceful-degradation rule, ingestion was performed directly from the EPUB: - **Source:** `_Lady_Janies_1__...__My_Lady_Jane__2016__libgen_li.epub` uploaded by Courtney - **Extraction:** `extract-text` produced a ~117K-word markdown rendering with chapter navigation preserved - **Stand-in for Layer 1:** [[The Lady Janies — My Lady Jane — Seed Passages]] — 14 strategically chosen passages with stable `MLJ-####` IDs and MEM/STR/NOTE/MIX type tags - **Movement Map:** uses actual chapter structure from the EPUB; six movements identified (A: Setup → F: Paratext) - **Thin zones flagged:** Part One body (Chs. 4–18) and Part Two body (Chs. 19–29) — sampled but not deep-read; flagged for targeted reading in subsequent prompts ### What's already known structurally (PROMPT 0 outputs) - **Narration:** first-person plural intrusive narrator ("we, your friendly neighborhood narrators") — rare in modern fiction; closest lineage Tom Jones / Tristram Shandy / *The Princess Bride* - **POV chapter rotation:** Edward / Jane / G (the three protagonists, three authors writing under collective alias "The Lady Janies") - **Epigraphs** (load-bearing per Agent L): Napoleon's "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" + Lady Jane Grey's "The crown is not my right. It pleaseth me not." - **Structural pivot at the literal midpoint:** the "Midlogue" — narrator re-contracts with reader, declares Part Two will reveal "THE TRUTH" - **Frye placement (provisional):** comedy (mythos) + low mimetic / ironic (mode) — to be confirmed in PROMPT 3 - **Paratextual thesis (provisional):** the dedication's joke ("there was enough room for Leonardo DiCaprio on that door" + "we're really sorry for what we're about to do to your history") fuses fan-cultural revisionism, anachronistic comedy, and feminist counterfactual logic — in 24 words ### Provisional unity statement (Adlerian, one to two sentences — to be refined in PROMPT 2) > *My Lady Jane* is a comic, intrusive-narrator alternate-history of Lady Jane Grey's nine-day reign that replaces her execution with a love story between a bookish heroine and a man cursed to become a horse by day, framed throughout as a deliberate, programmatic revision of the historical record performed by three contemporary women authors. (That's two sentences, but barely; the second is a single long apposition. I'll tighten in PROMPT 2.) --- ## ✅ PROMPT 0 — Status **Done:** - Layer 1 source note created with 14 seed passages - Working note created with YAML, ingestion summary, link back to seed source - Movement Map derived from EPUB structure (no inference required) - Thin zones identified for subsequent reading - Provisional unity statement drafted **Pending Courtney's choice:** - Run PROMPTS 1 → 13 in order (default sequence) - Jump to a specific prompt - Add highlights from any other source first --- ## 🔜 Next sections will populate as prompts run - [ ] PROMPT 1 — Setup, Contract, Baselines - [ ] PROMPT 2 — Inspectional Reading - [ ] PROMPT 3 — Pigeonholing, Genre, Mode, Convention - [ ] PROMPT 4 — Plot & Narrative Architecture - [ ] PROMPT 5 — Character System & Characterization - [ ] PROMPT 6 — POV, Narration, Voice & Reliability - [ ] PROMPT 7 — Style & Prose Craft (close reading) - [ ] PROMPT 8 — Setting, Worldbuilding & Chronotope - [ ] PROMPT 9 — Theme, Motif, Symbol, Imagery, Intertextuality - [ ] PROMPT 10 — Critical Lens Suite + DEIB / Ethics / Reception - [ ] PROMPT 11 — Notes Pipeline + Reader Response + Progressive Summarization - [ ] PROMPT 12 — Discussion / Teaching / Craft Pack - [ ] PROMPT 13 — Visual Thinking + Re-Read & Drift Plan + Final Synthesis