Celebrated Crimes, Vol. 6: Part 2: The Man in the Iron Mask

For over three centuries, one face has haunted the imagination of the world: the anonymous prisoner forced to wear a mask, imprisoned in a cell without windows, his very name erased from history. Alexandre Dumas, the mastermind behind The Three Musketeers, was equally spellbound. Before he fictionalized the legend in his epic novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne, he embarked on this meticulous investigation into the real man behind the mask. What follows is a gripping detective narrative in essay form. Dumas examines the leading theories: Was he an illegitimate royal child, a political threat, perhaps the twin brother of Louis XIV himself? He sifts through sparse records, contradictory testimony, and the myths that had already accrued by the 1840s. The result is neither dry scholarship nor sensationalist speculation. It is a master storyteller trying to solve history's most tantalizing puzzle, and failing, and inviting you to fail alongside him. For readers who have ever glimpsed that eerie mask in a textbook illustration and wondered: who was he? This is where the mystery lives.