The man in the iron mask The true story of Europe's most famous prisoner

One of the great mysteries in French history is the identity of the man in the iron mask, a prisoner under Louis XIV. Voltaire and Alexandre Dumas contributed to his notoriety, and over the decades, many have tried to identify him definitively. Wilkinson (Louis XIV, 2019), who has plumbed a number of both French and English royal secrets, turns her considerable sleuthing talents to this enduring mystery. Papers of the jailer who had charge of the masked prisoner were rediscovered in 2015, and they added to the evidence of the life and death of the prisoner who was held in two different Alpine fortresses, and on a Mediterranean isle before being transferred ultimately to the infamous Bastille in Paris. Wilkinson microscopically picks apart all the theories that have sprung up about the man in the iron mask and all the arguments and counterarguments that scholars have wrestled with over the centuries. Wilkinson's cast of characters swirls torrents of intrigue, but adepts in historical sleuthing will appreciate the dizzying twists and turns of all the minutiae.

Historian Wilkinson (Louis XIV: The Power and the Glory) illuminates the political upheavals of 17th-century France in this meticulous look at the case of Eustache Dauger, the prisoner believed to be the Man in the Iron Mask. She documents harsh conditions at the prisons where Dauger was held, and fills in gaps in the historical record by profiling his fellow inmates, including Count Nicolas Foucquet, whose sentence was changed by Louis XIV from "perpetual banishment" to "perpetual imprisonment," and the Comte de Lauzun, who was arrested after interfering in his cousin's affair with the king. Noting that a letter written by the Marquis de Louvois ordered Dauger to be killed if "he tried to speak of anything except his basic needs," Wilkinson speculates that the prisoner was a valet of Louvois's "who had somehow betrayed him," and not, as alleged by Voltaire, a relative of Louis XIV's. (She also claims that Dauger's mask was likely made of black velvet, and that he was only made to wear it "when he could be seen by others.") Though Wilkinson writes in an academic register, she packs in plenty of gossip and convincingly separates fact from fiction. Readers will savor this authoritative account of a centuries-old mystery. (July)