Somebody had to write it down.
The Queen is a development programme for women. It exists because the frameworks it stands on were built for men — and nobody had done the work of rewriting them.
Nelson Lecuane
Nelson Lecuane is the author, with Clinton Skinner, of The 5 Roles — the book that first set out the five positions this programme is built on. He wrote The Hero's Journey with Anthony Carroll, and A Graduate's Hero's Journey alone.
In 2024 he and Clinton began asking a question the leadership canon had never properly answered: why do the frameworks built for women's development borrow so heavily from men's — and what would one look like if it didn't?
The answer they arrived at was The Five Thrones. It is set out in full, with its sources and its debts, on the Method page.
Growth was never about climbing to the last throne. It's about steadying the one that's shaking. The Queen — the thesis in one line
Most development work for women is a ladder: get further, get bigger, get to the top. The Five Thrones is not a ladder. Princess, Warrior, Lover, Magician and Queen are five positions a woman holds at once, and one of them is always the one she is ruling from. The work is finding out which — and steadying it.
That is why the programme opens with an assessment rather than a curriculum. There is no point teaching the Magician's skills to a woman whose Warrior is fighting the wrong war.
What the programme actually is.
- The shape
- Twelve weeks. A small cohort, weekly mentorship, and one-to-one support alongside the group.
- Where it happens
- 80% online, 20% in person — built for women rebuilding a life, not clearing a calendar.
- What it teaches
- AI and entrepreneurship, worked one war at a time: spiritual, physical, financial, time.
- What it produces
- One income offer — built, priced, and taken to market. Owned outright by the woman who built it.
- Where to start
- Platform access is £29 a month: the archetype assessment, your role reading and the reading library, and the Academy lessons.
It begins with Ukrainian women.
The Queen opens with one closed, safeguarded cohort: The Ukrainian Queen. War took the career; the programme builds the income back, owned outright, on her own terms.
They were not left behind by AI. Most of them were never given the chance to use it in the first place. That is the whole gap this closes.
Graduates of the programme are invited to mentor future cohorts.
Which throne are you ruling from today?
Platform access £29 / month · hello@merlinjourney.com