Man in the Iron Mask the queen to be left alone with her midwife to give birth to the second child. To make the context clearer, it should be remembered that there was a controversy at that time over which one of twins was the elder: the one born first or the one who, being born second, would have, as was then thought, been conceived first. In such a situation, the reigning twin would face a serious threat to his throne. Also supporting the theory of King Louis XIV's twin, a thorough examination of the French Kings' genealogy shows many twin births, in the Capetian
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