The Man in the Iron Mask

For 34 years, a man wore an iron mask locked to his skull.

Ordered never to speak, never to show his face. A single glance

from a guard meant death. King Louis XIV sealed the command: mirrors banned,

letters burned, his very name erased from history. A complete and utter disappearance.

Whispers spread. Was he the king's secret twin? A noble witness to royal treason?

Or perhaps, as Voltaire claimed, the true heir, buried alive? But the darkest

truth? When he died in 1703, the mask was still fused to

his skin. No portrait, no grave, no one knows his face.