The Man in the Iron Mask (1998 film) replace King Louis XIV with his twin brother is foiled, the twin is initially depicted as a much more sympathetic character than the King. However, in the last part of the novel, the King is portrayed as an intelligent, more mature, and slightly misunderstood man who in fact deserves the throne - and the Musketeers themselves are split, Aramis (with assistance from Porthos, who is ignorant and easily duped) siding with the prisoner, D'Artagnan with King Louis, and Athos retiring from politics entirely. D'Artagnan, foiling the plot of the others, is tasked with capturing his friends, who have taken refuge
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