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Louis XVII, requiescat in pace…

An interesting story for all my fellow traditionalists.

PARIS – France laid to rest one of its most intriguing mysteries on Tuesday when it installed the tiny heart of Louis XVII – the son of beheaded king Louis XVI and queen Marie-Antoinette – in a royal crypt outside Paris.

European aristocrats were among the 2,500 people who packed into the Saint-Denis Basilica north of Paris to watch the 209-year-old heart in its crystal vase given a final burial after spending a long period as a much-traded curiosity in the wake of the French Revolution.

A 12-year-old descendant of France’s former royal family, Amaury de Bourbon-Parme, handed over the heart in a formal Mass broadcast to another 1,000 people watching outside. The presiding priest, Archbishop Jean Honore, paid homage to the “lost child who knew nothing of what he was and of what he is”.

Louis-Charles, the so-called “lost dauphin” who would have reigned as Louis XVII, died of tuberculosis at the age of 10 on June 8 1795 in a windowless cell in the French capital’s Temple Prison, where he had been incarcerated with his parents before they were guillotined.

“This is a way to give this child-martyr, who passed away in tragic circumstances and around whom mystery swirled for more than 200 years, a proper death,” said Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme, one of Louis XVII’s relatives.

(Agence France Presse)

Published at 5:21 pm on Tuesday 8 June 2004. Categories: France History Monarchy.
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