Man in the Iron Mask arrested in Calais in 1669 further to the execution of Roux, who would have denounced him when being tortured. Hugh Ross Williamson argues that the man in the iron mask was the natural father of Louis XIV. According to this theory, the "miraculous" birth of Louis XIV in 1638 would have come after Louis XIII had been estranged from his wife Anne of Austria for 14 years. Furthermore, Louis XIII was old, weak, ill, and not expected to live much longer, and thus may have been impotent at the time, implying that he was not the father. The theory then
Man in the Iron Mask in a newspaper at the time and that he was released after just a few months. His death is also recorded as happening in 1709, six years after that of the man in the mask. In 1801, revolutionary legislator Pierre Roux-Fazillac stated that the tale of the masked prisoner was an amalgamation of the fates of two separate prisoners, Ercole Antonio Mattioli (see below) and an imprisoned valet named "Eustache D'auger". Andrew Lang, in his "The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories" (1903), presented a theory that "Eustache Dauger" was a prison pseudonym of a man called "Martin", valet of the