Louis XVII (mar 27, 1785 – jun 8, 1795)

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At the age of four, he became the heir to the French throne when his brother died, and from that day forward, the whole palace staff bowed to his every desire. But the French Revolution destroyed his family, and the once carefree child—an orphan by the age of eight after his parents’ execution in 1793—was horribly abused and neglected, isolated in a prison cell in the Paris Temple. Vilified as the “wolf cub,” the “son of a tyrant” and the “bastard,” by 1795 the newly styled Louis-Charles Capet was unrecognizable, covered in sores and his belly distended from malnourishment. On June 8, 1795, Louis-Charles died of tuberculosis in the arms of one of his jailers. He was only ten years old. The revolutionary government quickly sprang into action. The child’s body, so neglected in life, was hovered over in death. Dr. Pellatan performed a detailed autopsy and found physical evidence of the abuse Louis-Charles had endured. Once the autopsy was completed, the body was secretly buried in a mass grave at the nearby Sainte-Marguerite Cemetery.

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