Bloody Rag May Not Have Touched Louis XVI's Severed Head 87
sciencehabit writes "It seemed like the perfect forensic tale. Earlier this year, a geneticist concluded that the remains of a blood-soaked cloth stored for centuries in an 18th century gourd likely belonged to the severed head of the last French king, Louis XVI — a conclusion supported by the fact that the DNA matched that taken from a mummified head belonging to his direct ancestor, King Henry IV. So confident were some people about the findings that a company now offers a blood test for anyone who wants to see if they, too, are descendants of this royal family. But new research released today calls into question the identities of both the blood and the head, arguing that the DNA in those samples does not match the DNA in living relatives of these kings."
Obvious solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your great great great great great great great grandmommy was a whore.
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it is a first post, and I know it is an AC using crude language. But his point stands. It is an entirely plausible explanation.
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More than plausible. From the article:
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...who was homosexual and thus perhaps unlikely to have actually fathered the next generation.
Philipe [wikipedia.org], Duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIV, the most powerful Duke of the Realm, was flamingly homosexual and didn't even try to hide it. Still, he married twice (to women), and had four children; Marie Louise, later to become the Queen of Spain, Anne Marie, who became the Queen of Sardinia, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who would serve as Regent of France, and Élisabeth Charlotte, who would become the Duchess of Lorraine. He was also a very crafty duke, his sexual peccadillos not withstandi
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Because being a husband to a woman automagically makes you a biological father to her children.
You were talking about ignorance?
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find interesting is that the AC gave a plausible number of "greats" to match Louis XVI's generation.
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find interesting is that the AC gave a plausible number of "greats" to match Louis XVI's generation.
What I find interesting is the massively huge assumption staring everyone in the face but nobody sees it: The idea that the living relatives might be an invented fairy tale. It wouldn't be the first time a royal lineage met its end and the "secret sauce" was switched and records altered to maintain the appearance of an unbroken line.
This 'forensic evidence' is based on records that are hundreds of years old; Altering birth and death records was a time-honored tradition back then. It was the Photoshop of the Dark Ages, and churches had just as much reason to perpetuate a fraud as anyone -- their power was often derived from royal mandate. You don't think, at a time when chopping heads off and torturing people was called 'Tuesday', that a little re-inking of a few geneology documents would be beyond the morality of these people, do you?
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More like great great great great grandaddy was A queen who had an understanding with THE queen.
I mean its one thing to have someone else sire the children in a hetero marriage, anything short of being on the magnitude of "black kid to white parents" can generally be glossed over. However, if the couple isn't having sex at all, any kid at all is a bit of a dead giveawa
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:4, Funny)
Your great great great great great great great grandmommy was a whore.
Calling the bloodline of the king into question? You bastards!
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If there wasn't some random kid swapped in to either replace a dead child or abducted child for political reasons. Which would, of course, have probably been noted by someone, but with royalty, you never know.
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I think not documenting it is the point of the entire operation. I'm not saying it's likely in this case (the rag is more likely to be a fraud, or possibly the "Louis" they beheaded being a look-alike). I'm just pointing out a possibility.
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It's been alleged in the case of Elizabeth I, where the young girl is meant to have died and been replaced by a boy who didn't even resemble her. This is used to explain why the young Elizabeth was a mild-mannered high achiever, whereas the teenaged and older Elizabeth was a vindictive woman with no great evidence of scholarship, and to explain why she went to such lengths not to marry, and why she looks so odd in her portraits.
Of course, there are more straightforward explanations, such as being imprisoned
Re:Obvious solution. (Score:4, Funny)
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What a coincidence, that's three words too!
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No four actually :)
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By the way this is difficult research. Aside from all the factors that cause someone to have a name without the genetic connection it's only 1/256 th of the identifiable dna that matches.
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And that is beside the point offered by my sibling posters: one of the lineage was not interested in women. He may have had an understanding with his wife where they both got to do as they wished.
In both cases "whore" is not a correct term IMHO, although she violated the terms of her marriage.
So What? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only people who should care are the posers and jerkoffs who like to trade on some accidental genetic connection to a dead king from an obsolete form of government. Isn't France on a republic or two beyond that one by now?
Re:So What? (Score:4, Interesting)
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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Isn't France on a republic or two beyond that one by now?
You're fooling yourself! They're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Re:So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're fooling yourself! They're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Working classes? In France? Preposterous! They'd never allow that.
You know what this means??!! (Score:1)
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That was actually my conclusion as well. How do we know that the person they executed was, in fact, the king and not a royal double? Finding someone who looks enough like the king to fool the peasants in the event of a revolt has been a time-honored tradition among royalty for centuries.
Maybe it was a long-lost ancestor of Mel Brooks. :-D
living relatives proof of anything? (Score:2)
maybe way back when, a woman thought to have been impregnated by a king instead spread her legs for someone else. been known to happen, in the courts in france
Louis XVI wasn't the last French King (Score:2, Informative)
Louis XVI wasn't the last French king. He had several successors after the fall of Napoleon. Getting that detail wrong makes me question the accuracy of the rest of the article.
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That's clearer than saying he was the last of the "dynastic ones" given that the next king of France was his younger brother [wikipedia.org], and the one following was the youngest of the three. (If you're interested, Louis XVII never reigned and died a few years after his father, but he's counted in the same way that France was ruled both by a Napoleon and his nephew, Napleon III, but never by Napoleon II.) The [wikipedia.org] following king [wikipedia.org] was also descended from Louis XIV, albeit distantly.
What I'd probably revise your statement to i
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I can't claim any great expertise myself, I studied it for two years at A level - 1785 to 1794 in depth for a year, then 1795-1871 in a bit less depth, so it covered all this period. But it was a longer time back than I like to remember. I might track down some histories.
As I recall, there were revolutions in 1789, 1791, 1792, 1794 (for a given value of "revolution"; those were at least major constitutional changes), seizure of power by Napoleon in a year I forget around 1800, restoration in 1815 and 1816,
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and three republics (1st in 1789/1792, 2nd in 1848, 3rd in 1971)
I meant 1871 for 3rd republic (I count it as unstable during 1870)
Louis XVI was not the last French King (Score:1)
There was Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Phillipe I.
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You're forgetting the three Napoleons.
The Napoleons had the title "Emperor". And the second of those was a child who only had it for a few days.
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Monarchy was restored between 1814 and 1830. Louis XVIII and Charles X who reigned during that time were both brothers of Louis XVI.
Next they'll be telling us... (Score:1)
...that the Russians didn't clone Hitler.
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That was the Brazilians.
LOL ... (Score:2)
Maybe that just means the descendants of kings have been screwing around just like kings did.
Just sayin'.
Title (Score:1)
His title was not French king but King of France, and he was not the last one.
His brother Louis XVIII succeeded him with that title.
His other brother reigned as Charles X, same title and the real last one.
After him came king Louis-Philippe I, but with 'King of the French' as title.
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Technically, the latter title indicates he was a royal king with claims based on the Frankish invaders, and not a native Celt.
If the head doesn't fit... (Score:2)
So, if the DNA doesn't match the royalty... Maybe they're not REALLY Royalty?!
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Nobody is 'really' royalty ... a family conquers and sets themselves up as a dynasty by asserting themselves to be kings and queens.
To some of us, anybody who professes to be royalty is an in-bred idiot with a sense of entitlement who should STFU and go away.
To quote Monty Python ... Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from
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Nobody is 'really' royalty ... a family conquers and sets themselves up as a dynasty by asserting themselves to be kings and queens.
To some of us, anybody who professes to be royalty is an in-bred idiot with a sense of entitlement who should STFU and go away.
To quote Monty Python ... Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Strange women don't lie in ponds, they hover mysteriously after dwelling beneath the surface in a mystical connection between water and air.
And then everyone suspends disbelief and doesn't demand they see if they weigh more than a wooden duck.
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The French will have to change their flag (Score:4, Funny)
The French will have to change their flag back to include the Fleur de Lys
(But it could be in white on a background of white so it will still look like their usual flag
Viva La France
oversight (Score:2)
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It's interesting when you get down to it and consider it using Occam's Razor.
1. A very old bloody gourd with very old blood, has a DNA match to a very old mummified head thought to be person Y
2. A modern person claiming to be related to person Y has DNA which does NOT match the blood in the gourd or the mummified head.
Which seems more likely:
A: The random chance that some 200+ yr old piece of bloody cloth just happens to match the DNA of a very specific 200+ yr old mummified head. But actual origins of
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There are stories of wet nurses "swapping" kids so their blood kin would have a better life. It would be pretty easy to see this being able to happen if a queen died in childbirth and the king wasn't very involved in day to day dealings of the child raising.
Sounds like a plot from some kindda comic opera:
Oh, bitter is my cup!
However could I do it?
I mixed those children up,
And not a creature knew it
In time each little waif
Forsook his foster-mother,
The well born babe was Ralph —
Your captain was the other!
- from H.M.S. Pinafore, lyric by W. S. Gilbert
He was not the last King of France (Score:1)
After the Revolution and Bonaparte, the monarchy was restored
Louis XVIII (1815-1824)
Charles X (1824-1830)
Louis Philippe (1830-1848) (deposed)
Napoleon III (1848-1870) was President then Emperor IIRC
You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie (Score:1)
This gives me an excuse to trot out a favorite lyric by Alan Sherman:
If you had been a nicer king,
We wouldn't do a thing,
But you were bad, you must admit.
We're gonna take you and the Queen
Down to the guillotine,
And shorten you a little bit.
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you went the wrong way old king louie
so we must put you on the shelf
that's why the people are revolting
'cause louie you're pretty revolting yourself!
Oblig Horatio Caine (Score:2)
This evidence is compelling, but let's not...
[sunglasses]
Get ahead of ourselves.
[air boat, YAHHHHHHHHHHHH!]
Good thing nobody tested the Shroud of Turin (Score:1)
You know, the one where the body spontaneously vaporized in a flash of disbelief ...
Startling New Discovery (Score:2)
"Lalueza-Fox was able to isolate a small amount of Y chromosome from the inner part of the head, which is transmitted from male to male each generation."