Amélie de Bourbon Parme of the royal Bourbon-Parma family has taken Paris by storm with Le sacre de Louis XVII, inspired in part by her own experience as a descendent of the family of Louis XVII, blending history, science and personal experience in a splendid fictional debut.
Out of pure chance one morning at a café, the narrator, a fictionalized Amélie, glances at the headline on the newspaper lying next to her, "DNA Returns Crown to Louis XVII". She feels certain the article was written just for her, for it is the obituary of her distant cousin, the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and heir to the throne, who died alone in a dark, damp prison during the French Revolution at the tender age of ten. The DNA analysis has just confirmed that it was indeed the child-king who died in prison, quelling 200 years of rumors that royalists had saved the true Dauphin, secreting him away and replacing him with another. Bourbon Parme alternates imagined scenes of the Prince’s ordeal with the compelling tale of the contemporary scientific discovery. As both historian and descendent of the Dauphin’s family, Amélie cannot help but be deeply moved by the tragic destiny of one of her most famous ancestors, and fascinated by the miracle of scientific advancement.