The Man in the Iron Mask (1985 film) Colin Friels as King Louis XIV, Gwen Plumb as Péronne and John Meillon in the role of Porthos. It was produced by Tim Brooke-Hunt and originally premiered on television. "The Man in the Iron Mask" is nowadays considered to be in the public domain. The three Musketeers have discovered, through D'Artagnan, the existence of a twin brother of Phillipe, the King of France. The hidden brother is always imprisoned, and nobody knows his face, which is always covered with a mask of iron closed with padlock. Tired of the cruelty and tyranny with which Philippe punishes the French people, the
Louis XIV of France hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. These varying interpretations of Louis abounded in self-contradictions that reflected the people's amalgamation of their everyday experiences with the idea of monarchy. Alexandre Dumas portrayed Louis in his two sequels to "The Three Musketeers": first as a child in "Twenty Years After", then as a young man in "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", in which he is a central character. The final part of the latter novel recounts the legend that a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask was actually Louis' twin