Man in the Iron Mask in the mask. It has even been suggested that he was one of the other famous contemporary prisoners being held at Pignerol at the same time as Dauger. Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was a son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, and therefore an illegitimate half-brother of King Louis XIV. However, the sincerity of this claim is uncertain. In his history essay "Le Masque de fer", French novelist Marcel Pagnol, supporting his theory in particular on the circumstances of King Louis XIV's birth, claims that the Man in the Iron mask was indeed a twin but born second,
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