Can you imagine yourself living in a prison within a prison? Not knowing your true identity or the nature of your crime? There are few mysteries in the history of the past few centuries which have been the cause of as much speculation, invention, imagination and phantastic reasoning, as that of The Man in the Iron Mask. For nearly 400 years the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask has mystified the minds of writers, poets and historians alike. No other subject in history is more obscure and elusive, and none more attractive to the general mind. It is a legend to the meaning of which none can find the key and yet in which everyone believes. In the story of the man in the Iron Mask we find everything possible and impossible that the vivid imagination of mankind has been able to invent. The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess the answer.
Who is the Man in the Iron Mask? Was he rapt away into this silent seclusion from the luxury of a court, from the intrigues of diplomacy, from the scaffold of a traitor, from the clash of battle? What did he leave behind? Love, glory, or a throne? What did he regret when hope had fled? Did he pour forth imprecations and curses on his tortures and blaspheme against high Heaven, or did he with a sigh possess his soul in patience? These questions have plagued yet intrigued people for hundreds of years. Is there a key to unlock this mystery, or will it be unsolved forever (Dumas)?.
The legend of the Man in the Iron Mask all starts out with King Louis the XIII and his wife Anne of Austria. There marriage was an unhappy one. Throughout his life Louis treated her with a cool reserve. That is why many people found it difficult to believe that Louis XIV was really the son of Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria for one simple reason: Louis XIII and his wife hated each other with a passion. And it was twenty-three years after their marriage that their first child, Louis, was born.
