The narrator of Taylor Swift’s “august” is romantically pursuing the fictional character James.
The song presents a young woman recalling a summer romance with James. She hopes the relationship might become meaningful, but James is already connected to Betty, so the narrator’s hopes are ultimately disappointed. The story is deliberately told from the perspective of the less central figure in the triangle.
James and Betty are named characters in Folklore’s connected narrative. “betty” follows James’s perspective, while “cardigan” follows Betty’s. “august” completes the triangle by showing what the relationship looked like to the unnamed girl who spent the summer with James.
The narrator is sometimes informally called Augustine or Augusta by fans, but Swift explained that she had not given the character a definite name. That makes James the single canonical character being pursued in the song, while Augustine is only an internal placeholder rather than the narrator’s confirmed name.