The Lady ending: 'King of the Wing' explained and Jane Andrews' shocking allegations and diagnosis
How accurate was the end of The Lady? Let's get into it...
The Lady, ITV’s drama about Fergie’s killer ex-dresser Jane Andrews, ends on an (expectedly) sad note – but you may be confused about one detail.
By episode 4 of the series, Andrews (played by Mia McKenna-Bruce) is in a bad place.
Her boyfriend, Tom Cressman, is dead – and she’s on the run from the police, driving aimlessly around the country as friends, family, and Sarah Ferguson (Natalie Dormer) implore her to cooperate. This is pretty much what happened in real life, and the finale follows the trial.
However, whether it’s the ‘King of the Wing’ or Andrews’ allegations against Cressman, you may get to the end of The Lady with a few questions. We’re here to answer them.
***Warning: spoilers for The Lady ahead***
How does The Lady end?
The Lady ends with Jane Andrews in prison, sentenced to life for the murder of Tom Cressman.
After an officer recovers her from a lay-by (having overdosed on painkillers and fallen asleep), the finale mostly takes place in and around her trial.
We see her being questioned by DCI Keith Douglas (Philip Glenister). Andrews claims she left the house after Cressman phoned the police, asking for an officer to come round and break them up before someone got hurt.
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According to Andrews, Cressman wanted to have sex with her that night. In the drama, she says he grabbed him and kneed her in the back. So, she defended herself with a cricket bat and eventually grabbed a knife. She claims to have stabbed him in self-defence and left without realising he’d died.
As Douglas says, they had enough to charge her with murder.
Jane Andrews is found guilty
With the trial impending, Aleksandra (Ophelia Lovibond) offers to let her and her parents stay at her home. However, after noticing contradictions in Andrews’ claims, she (politely, but firmly) asks her to leave.
We’ll get to the details of the trial shortly, but the finale ultimately ends with the jury finding her guilty.
“In killing the man you loved, you ended his life and ruined your own. It is evident you made your attack on him when you were consumed with anger and bitterness… there is only one sentence I can place upon you, and that is life imprisonment.”
In the closing scenes, we see Andrews’ arrival at “HM Holcombe Prison”. She has a conversation with a psychotherapist and writes a letter to someone known as the “King of the Wing”, according to a headline.
Before the credits roll, the drama explains how Andrews appealed her conviction on psychiatric grounds, but it was denied. She was released from prison in 2015, but recalled after harassment allegations from an ex-boyfriend (which weren’t proven). Andrews was then released in 2019.
You can read more about where Jane Andrews is now and why she was released here.
Did Fergie really contact Andrews after the murder?
Yes! As shown in the drama, police asked Sarah Ferguson to contact Jane Andrews in the immediate wake of Tom Cressman’s death.
“You must come forward and help the police,” she told her in one message.
The former Duchess also gave a statement to police as part of their investigation. It wasn’t cited in the trial, so we don’t know what she said. Ferguson hasn’t publicly commented on Andrews since her conviction.
Jane Andrews’ allegations against Tom Cressman
During Andrews’ trial in The Lady, she alleges that Cressman was physically abusive, going as far as to claim she was raped on the morning before the murder.
As the drama shows, she says Cressman was “relatively adventurous” in the bedroom and wanted her to dress up in “kinky clothing”.
Andrews also accuses him of hitting her, pushing her down the stairs, and tying her to the bed and raping her.
On the night of the incident, she claims she had tried to fend him off with a cricket bat, and she’d picked up the knife before he forced himself on top of her. That’s when he was stabbed, she alleges, and she “panicked” and fled.
What did Jane Andrews really say about Tom Cressman?
Jane Andrews accused Tom Cressman of all the same things in her real-life trial. She described him as “jealous, possessive and abusive with a violent temper”.
According to Andrews, shortly before he was killed, Cressman told her (as reported by The Guardian), “I’m really going to hurt you and nobody will believe you.”
However, none of Andrews’ claims have ever been proven, and multiple ex-partners of Cressman’s came out in his defence.
In real life, just like in the drama, her story was picked apart – whether it was the lack of evidence (she hadn’t mentioned the rape accusation until the trial) or contradictions under cross-examination.
Jim Dickie, the former detective superintendent who led the initial murder inquiry, said (via BGP): “She murdered him in real life, and then attempted to murder him in death by trying to ruin his reputation.”
Tom’s father, Harry Cressman, also said (as reported by BBC News): “I understand that anybody who is behind bars will do anything to get out of that position, but I think what she did to try to ruin our son’s reputation, the reputation of his brother and other members of her family is totally despicable.”
How accurate is The Lady ending?
The Lady is mostly accurate about Jane Andrews’ trial, particularly in her testimony and her cross-examination. However, there are fictitious elements.
For example, Aleksandra (played by Ophelia Lovibond) isn’t a real person. As the drama outlines at the start of each episode, “some characters, events, and scenes have been created and merged for dramatic purposes”.
So, while it’s unclear exactly where she stayed during the real-life trial, the scenes with Aleksandra appear to be fictional.
In the show, Andrews collapses after asking for a break from cross-examination, and she ends up hospitalised with an infection. This doesn’t appear to be true, either.
Towards the end of the episode, Andrews is imprisoned at HM Holcombe. This isn’t a real prison, and if you Google its postcode (SS4 6MC), you won’t find anything.
She was actually sent to HM Prison Bullwood Hall in Essex, before being moved to East Sutton Park Prison in Kent.
Does Jane Andrews have borderline personality disorder?
In the drama, a psychotherapist tells Andrew she may have borderline personality disorder, and that she had been suffering from depression.
According to the Centre for Women’s Justice, Andrews was assessed by two expert psychiatrists.
“Dr Fiona Mason concluded, that at the time of the offence, she was suffering from a depressive illness and post traumatic symptomology superimposed on her already abnormal personality structure,” its press briefing reads.
While Andrews was diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder after being convicted, it wasn’t enough to win an appeal.
Who is the ‘King of the Wing’?
This is easily the biggest question by the end of The Lady: who is the King of the Wing?
In the closing scene, Andrews tells her mum that she’s been writing to a new penpal. We see a photo of him from a newspaper clipping that describes him as the ‘King of the Wing’.
If you pause and look closely at the text, you can see a surname: Affcott. The camera eventually drifts across and shows us a picture of him, too.
However, there is no record of Andrews ever contacting anyone named Affcott, nor is it clear what ‘King of the Wing’ means. Whether it means he’s a prison governor or he’s connected to US politics (“wing” possibly referencing the White House’s west wing) is open to speculation.
Jane Andrews’ real penpal revealed
We do know that Andrews had a real penpal, though. His name is Mark Ellson, said to be a father of two when he spoke to the Daily Mail in 2012.
Ellson and Andrews began writing to each other when he was in prison for fraud. However, he said she “latched onto” him.
“She then takes it too far and becomes obsessive. She is a difficult person to understand but I have seen how erratic she can be. Others need to be aware of this too,” he claimed (via The Mirror).
Ellson also visited Andrews after he was released. In one letter, she told him, “My darling gorgeous Mark. I love you so much, forever your Jane xxx.”
When Mark failed to turn up for a planned meeting in 2009, she absconded from prison and wasn’t found until three days later. He stopped contacting her after that, but Andrews continued to try to contact him.
In one letter, she sent a photo of a couple in wetsuits with their heads stuck on.
Read more: The Lady real-life people in pictures alongside their cast counterparts
