Marie-Therese

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Susan Nagel, acclaimed for her biography Mistress of the Elgin Marbles, explores the life of a remarkable woman who defined an era during the tumultuous final days of the ancien régime. This compelling biography brings Marie-Thérèse to life, capturing the age of revolution and the decline of aristocracy, appealing to fans of Antonia Fraser and Amanda Foreman. On her seventeenth birthday in December 1795, Marie-Thérèse, the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, escaped from Paris's notorious Temple Prison. Many believe that the real Marie-Thérèse, traumatized by her family's brutal execution during the Reign of Terror, switched identities with an illegitimate half-sister often mistaken for her twin. Was she spirited away to live as the Dark Countess while an imposter took her place on the political stage? Using handwriting samples, DNA testing, and newly discovered Bourbon family letters, Nagel unravels this mystery. The biography details Marie-Thérèse's life, from her public birth to her precocious childhood, imprisonment, and later public reincarnation as a saint. Her strategic choice of husbands shaped nineteenth-century Europe, earning her admiration even from Napoleon, who called her the only man in the family. Nagel's gripping narrative vividly portrays an astonishing woman and her fierce loyalty to France.