Betty is James’s former lover in the Taylor Swift Folklore storyline connected to “august.”
The fictional triangle spans “Cardigan,” “august,” and “Betty.” Betty is the central figure in “Cardigan,” James narrates “Betty,” and the unnamed girl narrates “august.” James has a summer romance with the unnamed girl before ultimately reconciling with Betty.
This structure is one of Folklore’s clearest examples of Swift using multiple songs to show different viewpoints on related events. The songs do not form a conventional chronological plot in every detail, but their characters and references connect them into one imagined teenage relationship story.
Listeners sometimes call the unnamed narrator Augustine because Swift mentioned Augusta or Augustine as names she had in mind. However, Betty is the only answer here that is explicitly James’s former lover within the established three-song narrative.