marthajefferson:history meme: 03/∞ women | THE DARK COUNTESS (? - 1837)In 1807,
marthajefferson:history meme: 03/∞ women | THE DARK COUNTESS (? - 1837) In 1807, a mysterious aristocratic couple arrived in Hildburghausen, Germany. The young, blonde-haired woman always wore a veil to cover her face, and her companion, an older man, who never claimed to be either her husbandor her lover, acted as her protector (the man was later identified as a Dutch embassador in Paris from 1798 to 1799). The young woman had no name, and was soon nicknamed the Dark Countess by the townsfolk.They led a secretive life under the protection of the Dukeof Saxony, particularly the Countess who rarely ventured out. And when she did, was heavily veiled, dressed in black and always travelled in a closed carriage. For 30 years she lived this reclusive life. The physician who attended her passing estimated her age to be around 60 years old. She was inhumed very quickly, possibly without a religious service. She was not interred in the local cemetery, but in a strange tomb on a mountain called the ‘Stadtberg’ outside of the town of Hildburghausen, with no inscriptions or memorials to identify the occupant. Her true identity still remains a mystery today.Rumours started spreading that the woman was none other than Marie Therese of France, daughter of the unfortunate Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the only member of her family to have survived the revolution. She had been imprisoned for most of the Revolution, and the theory was that the young Princess had been so traumatised by what she had gone through, that she could no longer face the rigours of the outside world. In 2013, her grave was exhumed to obtain DNA to determine if she was Marie-Thérèse. The analysis revealed that the Dark Countess was not the Princess of France, but another woman whose identity remains a mystery. -- source link
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