A coffin with the skeletal remains of the ‘Dark Countess’, who some suspect is Marie Thérèse Charlotte, was reburied after a ceremony in Hildburghausen, Germany. You can see the exclusive photo here. Hopefully we’ll get more photos and news from the European press later today. The grave was exhumed earlier this month in the hopes of getting DNA samples to solve a 200-year-old mystery about the identity of the enigmatic woman buried in the tomb.
Marie Thérèse was the eldest daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France, and the only member of her immediate family to survive the French Revolution. The official account of her life states that Marie-Thérèse survived the Revolution and the succeeding violence, and married Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, eldest son of the future King Charles X of France. After her and her husband were forced to abdicate in 1830, they lived in exile in Edinburgh, Prague and Vienna. Marie Thérèse died in 1851 and was buried at a Franciscan monastery in Slovenia.
Over the years stories persisted that the real Marie Thérèse was so traumatized the Revolution that she secretly traded places with Ernestine Lambriquet, believed to be her half sister, and lived in hiding in Hildburghausen, Thuringia, in central Germany as the ‘Dark Countess.’ The ‘Dark Countess’ arrived in Hildburghausen, Germany in 1807 with a enigmatic count. She was rarely seen in public and was always veiled, she lived under the protection of the Duke and Duchess of Saxony- Hildburghausen in castle of Eishausen. The Telegraph reported that in May last year, Germany state radio MDR set out to end speculation over the identity of the Dark Countess by comparing DNA tests of her remains with Marie Thérèse’s official remains in the church of the Franciscan Monastery of in Slovenia.