All previous books on Marie-Therese have perpetuated the theory that she switched identities after the French Revolution in order to protect her safety. This book lays all the spurious rumours and far-fetched conspiracy theories to rest. Susan Nagel has discovered previously unpublished letters that reveal that Marie-Therese had serious doubts that her brother, Louis Charles, died in prison. Her research has uncovered undiscovered journals and letters.

In December 1795, seventeen-year-old Marie-Therese, the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, fled Paris's notorious Temple Prison. Kept in solitary confinement after her parents' brutal execution during the Terror, she had been unaware of the fate of her family, save the cries she heard of her young brother being tortured in an adjacent cell. She emerged to an uncertain future: an orphan, exile and focus of political plots and marriage schemes of the crowned heads of Europe. Susan Nagel tells a remarkable story of an astonishing woman whose life was shrouded in mystery, from her birth in front of rowdy crowds at Versailles, to her upbringing by doting parents, through to Revolution, imprisonment, exile, Restoration and, finally, her reincarnation as Saint and Matriarch.