https://vo.rs/tags/louis-xiv/Recent content in Louis-Xiv on vo.rsHugoenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Tue, 12 Dec 2023 08:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/unravelled/the-man-in-the-iron-mask-a-prisoner-a-legend-and-a-velvet-cloth/Tue, 12 Dec 2023 08:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/unravelled/the-man-in-the-iron-mask-a-prisoner-a-legend-and-a-velvet-cloth/<p>On the morning of 19 November 1703, a prisoner died in the Bastille. The register recorded him under the name Marchioly, gave his age vaguely, and noted that he had been buried the following day in the parish of Saint-Paul. The gravediggers were paid, the cell was emptied, and the furniture he had used was reportedly burned. He had been a prisoner of the French crown for more than three decades, moved from fortress to fortress under the same jailer, and in all that time almost no one had learned his name or seen his face uncovered. From that scrap of official secrecy grew one of the most durable legends in Europe: a man whose face was locked inside a mask of iron so that no living soul could recognise the king he might have unseated. The truth is quieter, sadder, and in its own way more interesting than the iron.</p>