Did Louis XVII die in the Temple Prison after his parents, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, were sent to the guillotine during the French Revolution? Or did he survive? The author, an alleged direct descendant of Louis XVII, attempts to prove that his ancestor was smuggled out of the prison when a substitute died in his place, and that for the past 220 years his family has been persecuted unmercifully.

We read this book aloud, both because we’ve been studying the French Revolution very recently and because I like to read review books aloud so I get more of the details in my brain. As we read the book, we kept noticing discrepancies. Most of them were fairly minor, attributable to typos. One we really had to chuckle at, when the author talked about something that happened in 1953 still affecting him 80 years later. Oops! The climax of the book, however, seemed, to us, to contradict what he had been saying all through the book. At one point, he stated, as a fact, that Louis XVII was buried in Delft, Holland. However, in the final chapter, in which he presented DNA “proof” that Louis XVII was from the de Bourbon family, he said that the body buried in Delft was not actually Louis XVII. We ended up feeling quite confused about the DNA testing and what it supposedly proved. Even though this was the main point of the book, according to the title, no conclusions were actually reached, as far as we could tell.

We found a lot of this book quite interesting, as it presents quite a different view of the French Revolution than we have ever read before. According to the author, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were wonderful, loving people who did much good for their people. After the Revolution, according to this author, many people in control of the country, such as Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and Charles X, knew that Louis XVII was still alive, but plotted to suppress that knowledge. For example, over 50 Pretenders tried to claim to be Louis XVII and were given a trial in court, but the real Louis XVII was never granted a hearing.

On the other hand, this book was difficult to read. There are spelling and grammar errors on practically every page. We also got very annoyed at the author’s digressions. He tells his life story, alternating with the history of his ancestor, and at times we were saying, “Why was this included?” Some of it was quite interesting, like the pyroclastic flow that destroyed his house in Montserrat, but didn’t have anything to do with the topic of the book. I also didn’t appreciate, in the first few chapters, several sexual references; I censored on the fly as I read the book.

If you are extremely interested in the French Revolution and the French royal family, you might find this book useful. We were disappointed in it, however, and felt like it didn’t fulfill the promise of the title.

-Product review by Emma Filbrun, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, September 2017