when the children finally did come, of course their paternity got disputed.
Speaking of disputes about her children, here's a story.
During the Revolution, they were imprisoned along with their parents. Then they were separated from their parents on the grounds that Louis and MA were unfit parents--Louis had to testify to the extremely improbable charge of being sexually molested by MA, just as an excuse for his jailers to separate them. Louis, as the heir to the now defunct crown, was given to some appropriately low-ranked member of society for a good revolutionary upbringing in prison. Then Louis and MA were killed, and the kids continued to be kept very secluded in prison. Louis XVII was 7 years old when this happened.
The accounts of young Louis's treatment by later royalist sources (including his sister, who was separated from him much of the time and is not a reliable eyewitness), describe abuse that far surpasses anything Fritz ever went through. I kind of have to hope accounts have been greatly exaggerated by propaganda. Then he died of illness in prison at age 10.
Or did he? Naturally, people turned up in later years claiming to be him, claiming that he was smuggled out. The strongest piece of evidence was an eyewitness who saw Louis XVII in prison (his doctor, I think?) and said that the boy refused to talk and showed little signs of understanding what was said to him, or any signs of being the same boy as the dauphin. Conspiracy theories ensued, including one where his protectors smuggled him out and substituted an uneducated deaf mute child, who conveniently couldn't write or say anything that might reveal the deception. Then the incredibly sickly deaf mute died, while the real Louis was living in exile.
Today, in the 21st century, there are still people claiming to be descended from one of the 19th century pretenders. (There are still at least two people living today claiming to be descended from Charles Edward Stuart/Bonnie Prince Charlie. Predictably, one who wants to be recognized as king and probably isn't descended, and one who wants nothing to do with royalty and probably is.)
Well, we can argue about textual evidence and probabilities all day and not get anywhere. A DNA test would be awesome! But burying a 10-year old deposed monarch in royal style was not a priority of the French revolutionaries (I say this ironically--they went to a great deal of trouble to make sure it didn't happen). So while we think we might know where he's buried, it's with very low confidence, and a test of a body found there wouldn't prove anything.
But, before he was buried, his heart was removed by a royalist sympathizer and stored in a container. (Preserving and displaying the hearts of monarchs separately was a long-standing tradition.) It passed through many hands, not always recognized for what it was, and disappeared completely at one point and was thought lost forever.
Meanwhile, in the mid 20th century, one family was still trying to prove their claim to the throne via the pretender. (Omg, guys, calm down.) In the 1990s, trying to get them to shut up, someone did a DNA test of the hair and arm bone of that guy (now long dead, of course), hair in some lockets belonging to Maria Theresia, which were thought to be locks of hair of her children, hair thought to belong to Marie Antoinette, and hair from living relatives of MA. They decided he *probably* wasn't Louis XVII, but it was hard to disprove with confidence, because the DNA was so degraded and contaminated because of the passage of time (pretenders also don't get the most pristine burials).
Then, circa 2000, a historian contacted the DNA guy and said, "Hey, I spent my life trying to track down Louis XVII's heart, and I know where to find it!"
Believe it or not, the heart had actually made it, through a very roundabout route, to Saint-Denis. For those of you just joining (or maybe you know this from historical fiction), that's where all the French monarchs were buried. The heart wasn't prominently displayed, nobody knew it was there any more, but there it was, hidden on a bottom shelf behind a crucifix in a glass container.
DNA guy got permission to cut off a small piece for the test, and boom! Perfect match. What we have here is the heart of the Dauphin, meaning the kid who couldn't talk to the doctor but seemed to appreciate the guy being nice to him, was the son of Louis and MA, was the same kid who died at age 10.
Before the DNA test, there was a ceremony to re-inter the remainder of the heart. The presiding priest said, "I do not know whose heart this is, but it is certainly symbolic of children anywhere in the world who have suffered. This represents the suffering of all little children caught up in war and revolution."
Which is very true--even if nine-tenths of what we hear about the sufferings of Louis XVII was propaganda, what we know for certain would be enough to traumatize any young child into not talking.
Of course, the descendants from the pretender are still contesting the results of the test, but they have even fewer people taking them seriously these days.
Older sister Marie-Thérèse, by the way, did not die in prison, and was the only one of MA and Louis's children to make it to adulthood. She spent her life in and out of exile, in sync with the fluctuations between monarchical and republican dominance in France. Wikipedia tells me there was also a dispute about whether a certain shadowy figure known as the "Dark Countess", who never spoke in public, might actually have been Marie-Thérèse. The theory is that MT was too traumatized to live a normal life and had traded places with another woman, allowing her to assume her identity, but DNA tests a few years ago proved that the Dark Countess was not the daughter of Marie Antoinette either. We still don't know who she was, but definitely not Marie-Thérèse. Cool name, though!
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Marie Antoinette's children
Date: 2019-11-18 01:08 pm (UTC)Speaking of disputes about her children, here's a story.
During the Revolution, they were imprisoned along with their parents. Then they were separated from their parents on the grounds that Louis and MA were unfit parents--Louis had to testify to the extremely improbable charge of being sexually molested by MA, just as an excuse for his jailers to separate them. Louis, as the heir to the now defunct crown, was given to some appropriately low-ranked member of society for a good revolutionary upbringing in prison. Then Louis and MA were killed, and the kids continued to be kept very secluded in prison. Louis XVII was 7 years old when this happened.
The accounts of young Louis's treatment by later royalist sources (including his sister, who was separated from him much of the time and is not a reliable eyewitness), describe abuse that far surpasses anything Fritz ever went through. I kind of have to hope accounts have been greatly exaggerated by propaganda. Then he died of illness in prison at age 10.
Or did he? Naturally, people turned up in later years claiming to be him, claiming that he was smuggled out. The strongest piece of evidence was an eyewitness who saw Louis XVII in prison (his doctor, I think?) and said that the boy refused to talk and showed little signs of understanding what was said to him, or any signs of being the same boy as the dauphin. Conspiracy theories ensued, including one where his protectors smuggled him out and substituted an uneducated deaf mute child, who conveniently couldn't write or say anything that might reveal the deception. Then the incredibly sickly deaf mute died, while the real Louis was living in exile.
Today, in the 21st century, there are still people claiming to be descended from one of the 19th century pretenders. (There are still at least two people living today claiming to be descended from Charles Edward Stuart/Bonnie Prince Charlie. Predictably, one who wants to be recognized as king and probably isn't descended, and one who wants nothing to do with royalty and probably is.)
Well, we can argue about textual evidence and probabilities all day and not get anywhere. A DNA test would be awesome! But burying a 10-year old deposed monarch in royal style was not a priority of the French revolutionaries (I say this ironically--they went to a great deal of trouble to make sure it didn't happen). So while we think we might know where he's buried, it's with very low confidence, and a test of a body found there wouldn't prove anything.
But, before he was buried, his heart was removed by a royalist sympathizer and stored in a container. (Preserving and displaying the hearts of monarchs separately was a long-standing tradition.) It passed through many hands, not always recognized for what it was, and disappeared completely at one point and was thought lost forever.
Meanwhile, in the mid 20th century, one family was still trying to prove their claim to the throne via the pretender. (Omg, guys, calm down.) In the 1990s, trying to get them to shut up, someone did a DNA test of the hair and arm bone of that guy (now long dead, of course), hair in some lockets belonging to Maria Theresia, which were thought to be locks of hair of her children, hair thought to belong to Marie Antoinette, and hair from living relatives of MA. They decided he *probably* wasn't Louis XVII, but it was hard to disprove with confidence, because the DNA was so degraded and contaminated because of the passage of time (pretenders also don't get the most pristine burials).
Then, circa 2000, a historian contacted the DNA guy and said, "Hey, I spent my life trying to track down Louis XVII's heart, and I know where to find it!"
Believe it or not, the heart had actually made it, through a very roundabout route, to Saint-Denis. For those of you just joining (or maybe you know this from historical fiction), that's where all the French monarchs were buried. The heart wasn't prominently displayed, nobody knew it was there any more, but there it was, hidden on a bottom shelf behind a crucifix in a glass container.
DNA guy got permission to cut off a small piece for the test, and boom! Perfect match. What we have here is the heart of the Dauphin, meaning the kid who couldn't talk to the doctor but seemed to appreciate the guy being nice to him, was the son of Louis and MA, was the same kid who died at age 10.
Before the DNA test, there was a ceremony to re-inter the remainder of the heart. The presiding priest said, "I do not know whose heart this is, but it is certainly symbolic of children anywhere in the world who have suffered. This represents the suffering of all little children caught up in war and revolution."
Which is very true--even if nine-tenths of what we hear about the sufferings of Louis XVII was propaganda, what we know for certain would be enough to traumatize any young child into not talking.
Of course, the descendants from the pretender are still contesting the results of the test, but they have even fewer people taking them seriously these days.
Older sister Marie-Thérèse, by the way, did not die in prison, and was the only one of MA and Louis's children to make it to adulthood. She spent her life in and out of exile, in sync with the fluctuations between monarchical and republican dominance in France. Wikipedia tells me there was also a dispute about whether a certain shadowy figure known as the "Dark Countess", who never spoke in public, might actually have been Marie-Thérèse. The theory is that MT was too traumatized to live a normal life and had traded places with another woman, allowing her to assume her identity, but DNA tests a few years ago proved that the Dark Countess was not the daughter of Marie Antoinette either. We still don't know who she was, but definitely not Marie-Thérèse. Cool name, though!