So you have heard that I am a storyteller? Most seem to think of me as a delusional old man who has dreamt himself into being royalty. But they are wrong, for who you see standing before you is a forgotten king. You may laugh, but I know this in my heart to be the truth. Let me tell of my tale, and then you may judge me as you wish...
Some people are born at the top of the world, and others are born into nothing. They say that kings are chosen by God, and that the hierarchy of the world is ordained by Heaven, perfect and righteous. But I know better.
I was born Louis-Charles, the Duke of Normandy, successor to the House of Bourbon,  the second son and third child of the dethroned king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose names likely still stir hatred in the streets of Paris. My childhood seems now to me a far-off dream. I can still remember the beauty of Versailles, the golden rooms illuminated by the endless sunlight pouring in through the windows. Crystal chandeliers hung every few feet from the ceilings, painting small rainbows on the wall as their prisms caught the light. Even the people were beautiful, dressed not in the rags you see all around now, but in the finest wear France had to offer. Ladies in lacy silk dresses, strings of pearls hanging upon their snow white necks and and wrists, men with fine, powdered wigs, gold-buttoned suits with nary a wrinkle. You could only imagine it- luxuries far beyond what any person could ever need, could ever want.
I was only a child when this beautiful, fantasy world fell apart on me. There were people banging on the gates, demanding change. They wanted food, they wanted their freedoms, and the mere sight of them had me clinging to the folds of my nurse’s dress, for their voices were hoarse with rage, and the strangeness of their appearance, clothes torn and tattered, faces bone-thin and dirty, scared me. To me, these were not people. People were the servants and the friends of my mother who coddled me, who were clean and angelic, like the portraits that hung from the walls. These were demons who were out for my family’s blood.
I did not understand why we was torn away from the palace. The carriage ride from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace was a silent one, for my parents were solemn, and not even my older sister made a sound. And yet from the outside, there was screaming, and I could hear the sound of rocks against the doors. “Hush, Louis,” my mother would tell me, but it was of no comfort.
I was young, but I longed to know what was going on.. Were we not the royal family, the noblest and most powerful in all of France? Why did we have to listen to the people who I had been taught were peasants, destined to eternally serve under us? What right did they have to command us? My father’s decrees were mandates from God, and was God not infallible?
Our time in Paris, among the people, was excruciating. Before I had been alone among my family and servants, free to stroll outside in the beautiful gardens to frolick and play. But now, I was trapped among the demons, whose gazes were filled with hatred. They blended together into the gray dust of the streets, the red of the banners they waved, and I longed for the golden palace of Versailles as if it were heaven itself. My parents were forever absent, until they came to grab me from my room from the dead of night.
We snuck upon a dull carriage, one not so different from the ones I saw pulled by nearly lame horses upon the streets. I was put into the clothes of a lowly kitchen boy, for the very first time stripped of my rank. I hoped that we were going to run back to Versailles, back to home, but my parents spoke of foreign lands and foreign kings, and hushed me to sleep, letting me know that when I awoke, I would be safe. Alas, this was not to be.
Everyone knows the fate suffered by my father, Louis XVI. I was not present at his death, but I have visited la Place de la Révolution, la Place de la Concorde, where the cold gray steel blade of the guillotine has fallen on the heads of far too many. If one looks closely enough at the cobblestones, perhaps they can still see the streams of red blood that poured out of the baskets, the blood of royals and peasants blending together in gruesome harmony. The revolutionists truly sought equality- neither the poor nor the rich were spared from the great equalizer of death.
But I did not suffer, you say? Look here, upon my neck. See the scars of illness, which nearly killed me under the “care” of revolutionaries. Don’t shy away now, this is the lightest of my scars. Let me scroll up my sleeves, my pant legs, see the skin that is still ragged and red even after all these forty years. I was whipped, for no fault but that of my heavenly blood. They left me alone, abandoned even by God himself. I had no family, no faith, and each day was something to dread. Perhaps a whipping from the short-tempered man for some erroneous act of disobedience. Perhaps I was to be starved for weeks, for I was merely a forgotten prisoner, left to rot in some room of the palace.
It was a doctor who rescued me, who vouched for my death in order to free me from the hell of my captors. He left me in the hands of an orphanage, with the command to never speak of my royal heritage, for if it was to be known that one of the royal family still lived, the whole of France might demand my head. I was kicked from the orphanage merely years later, deemed too much of a burden, like the other older kids, when more and more abandoned children flooded Paris as the gulliotine dropped on the heads of more and more adults.
Years I spent in hiding, scrounging on the streets like a rat, a beggar. I slept in alleyways and ate the crumbs off the ground, having long forgotten the taste of true cooking. My clothes quickly fell to tatters, and I became one of you, just another forgettable face in the streets of Paris.
From the shadows, I have seen countless rulers rise and fall. I have seen the Reign of Terror under Robespierre, the empire of Napoleon, when France grew to be the mightiest nation in all the world. All this while, I have been embittered, for to be a ruler was my fate, the palaces of France my birthright. Would you believe, that even in the reign of my uncle, not one would believe me? There was no mark upon me to deem me royal, and the last of my family turned me away, seeing in me not the god-given right to be a king, but the demeanor of a commoner, a peasant, one of the very devils who stripped me of home and family. Still, I know not what I have done to deserve this.
You shake your head at me, laugh even. I am a king, but I have no evidence to prove to you so. I still believe myself a king, even now when the great kings of France have fallen, and I stand before you starved to the bone, not even a single Franc to my name. Can you perhaps at least laugh to the irony of it all? Here before you sits Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy, the lost Louis XVII, a street rat. My robe is that of tattered clothes, my crown is the dirt that sits upon my brow.
Walk away, but do not forget about me. When you go seek your fortune, young man, do not be so easily entranced with promises of freedom and riches. When your happiness is bought from the suffering of others, it is certain come to an abrupt end, and you too will be brushed away, forgotten. When you fight, remember those who have been lost.