how DNA solved the mystery of the murdered son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
In 1793 when French Queen Marie-Antoinette was beheaded at the guillotine during the Revolution (King Louis XVI died before her), her eight-year old son, Louis-Charles, was imprisoned in the Temple Tower, along with his older sister, Marie-Therese. Both children were imprisoned for two years and while Marie- Therese survived, Louis-Charles, the boy king, did not. Once his parents were dead, no one saw him but those of the revolution who brought his food. This secrecy gave rise to rumors that he had somehow escaped. His death at the age of ten prompted an autopsy. One of the attending doctors removed his heart and secreted it from the prison in his pocket. For two hundred years this heart had many remarkable journeys. As imposters, who claimed they were the boy-king, came and went, the heart survived into the twenty-first century when DNA testing would at last reveal to the world who the real Louis-Charles was.
