The man who wanted to be king: The case of Prince Michael of Albany /Lafosse in context

The boy born on 21st April 1958 was the son of two young middle class Belgian citizens. Doubtless, with all the joy of first-time parenthood, the father - Gustave Joseph Clément Fernand Lafosse, a shopkeeper, and the mother - Renée Julienne Dée, a business employee, undertook the legal registration of the birth.  This was done before the Registrar in the Watermael-Boitsfort district of Brussels. The first names of the boy were entered into the city record as “Michel Roger”.  At the time of the birth the family was domiciled at “Bruxelles, avenue Jean Sobiesky,36.” 

The family and witnesses were not to know that young Lafosse would one day repudiate this birth certificate and angrily declare it to be false.  He would replace it with not just one but two crude forgeries, both of which declared him to be “son altesse royale, le Prince Michael Jacques Stewart, septième Comte d’Albanie.”

Published on an earlier website shortly after Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland, published in 1998 with the help of Jack MacDonald, his co-worker Nigel Tranter, and the very able Guy Stair Sainty, Michael ("Stewart") Lafosse was exposed as a ‘pretender’. The Daily Telegraph referring to "an unanswerable claim" and The Guardian with an article titled "The man who would be king" soon had interviewed the would be Stewart.

Then, when the Home Office sought clarification from Michael la Fosse in reference to his use of forged documents for the purpose of seeking (and receiving) British naturalization and the issue of a British passport he then left the United Kingdom and via Belgium moved for some time to Australia. Here Richard Hall (who originally is from Scotland but moved to Australia) became interested in the pseudo-Prince and (initially inspired by:) ended up writing an expose which he sent to us for publication (to be posted in a few days).

The Royal House of Stuart became extinct in the male line with the death of Henry (IX) Stuart, Duke of York, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church and Bishop of Frascati, in 1807. He had succeeded his elder brother, Charles (III) Stuart, sometimes known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie", in 1788, on the latter's death without legitimate issue (he left one illegitimate daughter, Clementina, who also died without issue). Both were the sons of James (III), Prince of Wales, only son of James II, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, (illegally) deposed as King of England and Scotland on 10 Dec 1688, and as King of Ireland six months later, who died in exile in 1701. With the death of Cardinal Henry of York, representation of the House of Stuart passed to Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, King of Sardinia. The latter's present heir is Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

In naming "Marguerite Marie Therese O'Dea d'Audibert de Lussan" as Charles' supposed second wife "Prince Michael" begins a pattern of attributing to people the surnames of their maternal ancestors; Marguerite O'Dea may have been descended in the female line from the families of Audibert and Lussan, but she had no right to use these surnames herself. She was not a member of the great French families of Audibert or Lussan and had no right to the title "comtesse de Massilan" (see underneath the extensive comment of our co-worker Richard Hall*).

Prince Michael also brings together four lines of descent from Prince Charles Edward Stuart. His grandmother, the Princess de Sedan, descends from the marriage of Aglae Clementine, daughter of the Duchess of Albany by Ferdinand de Rohan-Guenene (sic, actually Guemenée), whilst his father the Count of Blois has two descents from the other Rohan-Albany daughter, both via Prince Louis Xavier de Bourbon, son of Charles, Duc de Berri, the son of Charles X. His paternal grandfather descending from Prince Louis' daughter Victorine, and that grandfather’s wife being a descendant of the Duc d’Aquitaine.

Today, there are several lines descended from Prince Edward James, Second Count of Albany. They include the Counts of Derneley and the Dukes of Coldingham. Foremost, however, in the main line of legitimate descent from Charles Edward Stewart and his son Edward James is the present Seventh Count of Albany: Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, Duc d’Aquitaine, Comte de Blois, Head of the Sacred Kindred of St Columba, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Temple of Jerusalem, Patron Grand officer of the International Society of Comission Officers for the Commonwealth, and President of the European Council of Princes. Prince Michael’s own compelling book "Forgotten Monarchy" (a thoroughly detailed and politically corrected history of the Scots royal descent) is now in the course of preparation.

The senior Stewart line goes all the way back to King Arthur’s father, King Aedan of Scots, on the one hand and to Prince Nascien of the Septimanian Midi on the other. The Scots descent traces further back through King Lucius of Siluria to Bran the Blessed and Joseph of Aramathea (St James the Just), while the Midi succession stems from the Merovingians male ancestral line through the Fisher Kings to Jesus and Mary Magdalene."

This wholly fictional claim is taken from The Bloodline of the Holy Grail - The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed by Laurence Gardner, The Chevalier Labhran de St Germain, and published by Element Books. It is a complete invention, and cannot be supported by any documents or historical sources. The alleged genealogy is filled with falsehoods, the most obvious being that Prince Charles Edward, Charles III, never married "Marguerite O’Dea d’Audibert de Lussan, Comtesse de Massillan" (1749-1820), had he done so he would have been guilty of bigamy since he was already married to Princess Louise of Stolberg, who survived him. Perhaps this name is called into the equation because the Drummond Dukes of Melfort married into this same family and inherited the Lussan title. See the extensive comment below.*

The de la Tour d'Auvergne family, Dukes of Bouillon and Princes of Sedan had become extinct in the male line in the 1790s, and their inheritance passed to the Rohan family; "Germaine Elize Segers de la Tour d’Auvergne, Princess de Sedan" (1908-1992), did not exist (at least not as a member of that family with those titles). The fact that he apparently does not even know the alleged date of this fictional marriage - his own grandparents - is an astonishing admission when it is supposedly by virtue of this alliance that he makes his ridiculous claim to the British throne! The fact that a wholly fictional son of the Duke of Berry, "Prince Louis-Xavier de Bourbon" is called into the equation is further evidence of "Prince" Michael's fantastic imagination. He also claims a descent from the Duke of Aquitaine (later Dauphin and then titular Louis XIX), who never actually had any issue by his wife, the only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.

Seen in context there have been other cases

Like other such claimants he haunts the world of fantasy royalty and self-styled Orders. An occuring theme here is also the clash between conventional academic history and the romantic version of history spread by amateurs and conspiracy theorists. Today an insurmountable chasm separates the Oxford history professor writing scholarly papers on medieval agriculture, or pontificating on the intricacies of French law at the time of Louis XI, and the Internet conspiracy theorist trying to make a case that William Gladstone was Jack the Ripper or that Adolf Hitler escaped the Berlin bunker and lived to a ripe old age. But in the nineteenth century the gap between conventional and romantic history was much narrower. Widely read, eccentric dilettantes devoted their lives to solving great historical mysteries and sifted through vast quantities of contradictory evidence; both Naundorff and Kaspar Hauser recruited some of their warmest supporters from their ranks. Not until the 1950s could a clear and growing impatience with the survivalist rumors be noted among French academic historians, although their books on Louis XVII did little to put the national myth of the lost dauphin to sleep. In Germany, the Hauserians maintained the upper hand even longer. Hermann Pies and Johannes Mayer, whose herculean efforts to prove that Kaspar was the prince of Baden were reviewed earlier, were both private scholars. The rationalist German academics who wanted to point out the many shortcomings of the Hauserian propaganda had difficulties even getting their works into print. In some of the other historical cases of disputed identity, where the amount of conflicting evidence was much less, modern historians have succeeded in refuting the claims of some nineteenth-century great pretenders. The claim of Olive Serres was crushed by the 1930s, and that of Helga de la Brache by the 1970s. In addition, the arguments presented by Professor Roe, and reinforced by myself in this book, clearly refute the notion that the Tichborne Claimant was Roger Tichborne.

For example there were hundred’s of Dimitri’s (son of a Russian Czar) and a well documented 101 “false dauphins” all pretending to be the lost son of King Lois XVI, all 101 claiming to be the current “King of France,” each with less or more, followers. Not least of all America had at least five false dauphins. One German clockmaker, (who found some followers among Saint- Simonianists and French occultist like Eliphas Levi) the Naundorffists, strengthened their position during the Third Republic, and actually became a force to be reckoned with in French politics. There were, at the time, Bourbon legitimist, Orleanist, Bona partist, and Naundorffist deputies in the French parliament, ensuring vigorous debates when the question arose of who had the legitimate right to the throne. In 1874, Naundorff's sons petitioned that their father be recognized as Louis XVII, but they lost their case. Today they have a presence on the internet, still pursuing their (long proven to be false) claim.

There is no doubt that the hair and bone originated from Naundorff, and his exposure as an impostor agrees well with the available historical evidence. The study of the dauphin's heart has the benefit of a positive match, indicating that it comes from a matrilin­eal descendant of Empress Maria Theresia, the mother of Marie Antoinette. But in this case the available historical and medical evi­dence is much less clear than in that of Kaspar Hauser; there are numerous puzzling circumstances indicating the possibility of a sub­stitution of children, although not an escape. The impact of the DNA evidence is reduced by the fact that the heart several times shared a repository with other Habsburg hearts, and possibly also with the heart of the first dauphin, Louis Joseph, but this may just be my wish to believe that at least one proper historical mystery of disputed iden­tity remains for future generations to ponder.

Also in the case of the famous (due to a number of Hollywood movies and TV series) Anna Anderson, the Romanov mitochondrial DNA did not match that from a hair sample and an intestinal biopsy taken during life. In the 1920s and 1930s, there had been speculation that Anna was in fact (and most probably correct), a Polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska. One of Schanzkowska's sisters had claimed Anna as her kinswoman, but Anna had regally dismissed her. It turned out, however, that mito­chondrial DNA from a tissue sample from one of Schanzkowska's family members matched that of Anna Anderson. Thus it can be concluded that, like Naundorff, Anna Anderson was an impostor. But the books and films about the pseudo-Anastasia have made her famous, and people still want to believe her story. They speculate that the KGB faked the tsar's remains or that the CIA switched biopsies in the hospital, and some Internet homepages still uphold her claim. (M. Stoneking et al. in Nature Genetics 9, 1995, 9-10; plus the missing bones were announced to have been found see BBC News online, May 25, 2002).

Of course just like with all other examples that could be cited (ranging into the thousands), there were more than one Anastasia claimant. In the years after the Russian revolution, bogus grand duchesses and tsarevitches appeared in every Siberian town. Since World War II, there have been at least ten Anastasias: three in Britain, one in Tokyo, one in Russia, and one in Montreal. One American claimant appeared in Rhode Island in the 1960s; another ran the Anastasia Beauty Salon in Illinois. The only one of them to achieve even a small fraction of Anna Ander­son's fame was Eugenia Smith, who wrote her memoirs in 1963 and passed a lie detector test arranged by Life magazine. Her story was unconvincing however, and when asked to provide a DNA sample in the mid-1990s, she refused. The ten Anastasias had no shortage of sis­ters to choose from; there were at least three claimants for each of the titles of Grand Duchesses Olga, Maria, and Tatiana.  Eugenia Smith's book was Anastasia, New York, 1963; other mystifications are discussed by M. Occleshaw, The Romanov Conspiracies, London, 1993).

Of the eight men claiming to be Tsarevitch Alexis (the younger brother of Anastasia), the most prominent was the Polish secret service officer Colonel Michael Goleniewski, who defected in 1960 and went to the United States. A brazen impostor, he claimed that his father the tsar had lived on in Poland until 1952 and that three of his sisters were still living there. Eugenia Smith, the bogus Anastasia, was his fourth sister, he claimed, and they had a touching reunion, only to denounce each other a few weeks later. Goleniewski died in New York in 1993, sharing his "sister" Eugenia Smith's distrust of DNA testing to the last. (See V. Retrov et al., The Escape of Alexis, 1998), and M. Gray, Blood Relative, 1998).

A well-known twentieth-century lost heir is the infant son of Colonel Charles Lindbergh, kidnapped for ransom in 1932. What was purported to be his dead body was later found and identified by the family. The carpenter Bruno Hauptmann was convicted for the kidnapping and murder and executed in the electric chair. Although strong forensic evidence links Hauptmann with the crime, some people have continued to doubt his guilt. Conspiracy theories have abounded: had the  baby been kidnapped and murdered by the Mafia, by the gang of Capone, by his aunt Elizabeth Morrow, or even by Charles Lindberg himself ? More audacious still is the suggestion that Charles Lindberg Jr. was not killed at all. It has been claimed that a gang of bootlegers from New York used to ship their liquor on the back roads near area searched by the police looking for the Lindbergh baby. Fed with being stopped and searched by the police, they prepared a baby’s corpse and planted it in the woods to get the police off their trac and enable them to ply their trade as usual.

In the 1970s and 1980s, several claimants surfaced, attractec the Lindbergh millions; they had implausible tales to tell. The factory worker Kenneth Kerwin claimed to have recalled being kidnapped a child in a session of hypnotic regression; he could also describe Lindbergh nursery in some detail. But his adopted father told the journalists that Kerwin was certainly not a Lindbergh. His claim was aided by the fact that whereas he had brown hair and dark eyes, Ch. Lindbergh Jr. had been blond and blue-eyed. The fellow claimnant Lome Huxted also "remembered" his true identity during a hypnotic session and even passed a lie detector test. Following Naundorf’s precedent, he had his name legally changed to Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. In the 1990s, he was still pursuing his claim.

Another well-known Lindbergh claimant is the Connecticut businessman Harold Olson. His story was that Colonel Lindbergh had been a leading crime fighter in the Prohibition era. The imaginative Olson claimed that Lindbergh used to fly his airplane over New Jersey to mark the coordinates of any plume of smoke that would indicate an illicit distillery for moonshine whisky and then called in the police. Some of the bootleggers decided to get back at Lindbergh by kidnapping his son. Framing Hauptmann as the kidnapper was part of the plot. They then used the Lindbergh baby in a blackmailing scheme to spring Al Capone from prison, but Lindbergh chose to sacrifice his son rather than to be responsible for this notorious gangster's being set at large. The ending of this preposterous story is that after their plot had failed, the gangsters no longer had any use for their hostage. With uncharacteristic clemency, they did not kill him, but instead were kind enough to hand him over to caring foster parents. Both Olson and Kerwin were still active in 2003, along with at least five other pretenders, one of them a black woman from Oklahoma, who told the journalists a wild story of skin dyes and sex-change operations. The pretenders demand DNA testing, but the Lindbergh family has ignored them.

In fact if not all, royal families have had their fair share of bastard children. In Britain, King Charles II was notorious for his many amours with various ladies at his merry court; more than a few noble families can boast royal blood as a result of the king's attentions to their forebears. As we have seen, George Ill's brothers and sons also sowed their wild oats freely. A bastard child of a royal personage can claim neither title nor inheritance, but the situation changes completely if it can be proved that the king or duke secretly married the mother. The legend of Hannah Lightfoot is the most famous example of this. Although there was a preexisting London tradition about the prince and the fair quaker, it is clear that much of the publicity about the case in the 1820s was due to the activities of Princess Olive, who herself claimed royal descent from another secret marriage. Another curious example of a "secret marriage" mystery comes from nineteenth-century Sweden. King Gustaf IV Adolf of Sweden, who reigned from 1792 until 1809, was a feeble creature-wrong-headed, incompetent, and bigoted. The only redeeming elements in his character were his heartfelt religiosity and high moral values. His disastrous foreign policy ran the country into war with Russia, resulting in the loss of the province of Finland to the armies of Tsar Alexander L. Not long thereafter, the king was dethroned and exiled to Germany. There he underwent a complete personality change; he divorced the queen, drank and reveled to excess, slept with many prostitutes, and left a trail of illegitimate little princes and princesses all over Germany. In the meantime, the French marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected king of Sweden; after his death, the throne was inherited by his son Oscar 1. But at this time a strange woman with aristocratic looks and demeanor appeared in Stockholm. She called herself Helga de la Brache and claimed to be the legitimate daughter of Gustaf IV Adolf and Queen Fredrika, who she alleged had briefly reconciled and secretly remarried during the exiled king's travels in Germany. Queen Fredrika was a princess of Baden, and this would have made Helga de la Brache the cousin of Kaspar Hauser, if both their claims had been genuine. Many upper-class people in Stockholm accepted Helga de la Brache as a princess of the old Vasa dynasty, and King Oscar himself gave her a pension and paid off her debts. She was called the Ghost of the Kingdom of Sweden, since it was believed that she had dangerous knowledge that might even enable her to claim the throne. A gloomy, hypochondriacal character, this Scandinavian pretender wholly lacked the dash and vivacity of Princess Olive. In the 1870s, a clergyman looked into the Ghost's past and exposed her as Aurora Magnusson, the daughter of a poor, drunken customs constable. The king stopped her pension, and the Ghost died impoverished in 1885. Later research has supported the conclusion that she was an impostor.

The "Sickert legend," well known to students of Jack the Ripper and his crimes, is yet another variation on the "secret marriage" theme. Since the 1970s, the artist Joseph Sickert claimed that the duke of Russians, since several similar tales were current at the time. One told that Alexander's wife, Empress Elizabeth, did not die in 1826; rather, she also faked her death and lived on for more than a decade as Vera the Silent, a humble nun in Siberia 

Charles XII, Sweden 's famous warrior king, was shot dead, quite possibly by his own men, in 1718. But many Swedes refused to believe that he was really dead. There were tales that the king was walking the countryside, disguised as a tramp, to find out whether the people still supported him after eighteen years of war and carnage. In 1721, a claimant appeared in Dalecarlia and managed to convince quite a few people he was Charles XII. When arrested by the authorities for inciting rebellion, he confessed that he was an apprentice goldsmith named Benjamin Dyster. Another allegedly immortal Swedish royal was Prince Gustaf, the son of the aforementioned Oscar I, who supported Helga de la Brache. He was very popular, and there was much consternation when he suddenly died in 1852, at the age of just twenty-five, having been healthy and fit. Rumors soon spread in Sweden that the prince had faked his death, since he had fallen madly in love with a Russian countess, whom his family had forbidden him to marry. There were even alleged sightings of the prince, living abroad with his new wife. In reality, there is little doubt about Prince Gustaf's death. (P. Hallstrom, Handelser (on Prince Gustaf), Stockholm, 1927, p. 260).

More mysterious is the death of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, presumed to have been lost at sea in 1890. A feckless, dissatisfied character, he had changed his name to Johann Orth, married an opera dancer, and denounced his noble titles the year before. He aspired to become a merchant mariner, purchased a large sailing ship, and took it for a lengthy cruise to South America. The impetuous archduke was last seen in La Plata, where he dismissed the ship's captain, took command himself, and left for Valparaiso. He never arrived, and no trace of his ship was ever found. His mother refused to believe that he was dead. Rumors had it that he had faked his own death to escape into obscurity, and he was sighted as a monk in Spain, a lumberjack in Uruguay, a playboy in Biarritz, and a polar explorer on his way to the Antarctic. (J. G. Lockhart, Here Are Mysteries, London, 1927, pp. 33-64).

The United States has no kings, queens, and nobles to spin legends around, but the "immortal king" legend nevertheless makes its appearance in American culture. Probably the best-known example is the case of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Conventional history states that Booth was shot dead at Garratts Farm, Virginia, on April 26, 1865, twelve days after killing Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington. But speculation has been rife that the assassin managed to escape or that the body of another man was given out to be that of Booth as part of a larger conspiracy. There were also rumors that Booth was alive long after 1857. One had it that he became an actor in San Francisco, another that he kept a saloon in Granbury, Texas, and a third that he went to Bombay, where he was last heard of in 1879. In 1903, in Enid, Oklahoma, a man named David George confessed on his deathbed that he was really John Wilkes Booth. Although some people objected that he was much taller than Booth and had blue eyes whereas Booth's were black, the Memphis lawyer Finis L. Bates bought the corpse, had it mummified, and set out to exhibition the circus. Bates wrote a book to prove his mummy was really that of John Wilkes Booth, but he was much ridiculed and died penniless in 1923. The later career of the mummy was as adventurous as that of the heart of the Temple Child: it was bought and sold, seized for debt, chased out of town for not having a license, and at least once kidnapped for ransom. It remained a steady earner throughout its long sideshow career. In the 1930s, it was x rayed in an attempt to prove it was really Booth's, but results were inconclusive. Many Texans saw the Booth mummy on the carnival circuit during the 1930s and 1940s; it was exhibited as late as 1972, but its present whereabouts are unknown. On the immortal Booth, see F. L. Bates, The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (New York, 1908), 1. Forrester, This One Mad Act (New York ,1937), and Furneaux, Fact, Fahe or Fable, pp. 12-28. The story of the mummy is in Dallas Morning News, of April 10, 1998. A good recent book on the Lincoln assassination, E. Steers Jr., Blood on the Moon (New York, 2001), gives the stories of Booth's escape little credence.

Booth is not the only notorious American to be credited with amazing powers of survival. As a part of the glorification of nineteenth century gunslingers and twentieth-century gangsters, legends of immortality have cropped up about quite a few of them. Jesse James was not killed in 1882, but lived on in Granbury, Texas, until his death in 1951, at the ripe old age of 103. Billy the Kid lived nearby and attended Jesse's 1 02nd birthday party in 1949. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did not die in Bolivia, but went back to the United States and led a comfortable life for many years. The notorious outlaw and gunslinger Wild Bill Longley cheated the hangman in 1878 and lived on for forty-five more years as the quiet family man John Calhoun Brown in Iberville Parish, Louisiana. It was not the gangster John Dillinger who was killed in Chicago in 1934 but his double, and the real Dillinger lived on into the 1960s. Professional historians have marveled at these legends, which have very little foundation in fact, but this has not kept them from gaining a fanatical following among various enthusiasts. Longley's execution was witnessed by four thousand people, three doctors declared him dead, and the sheriff personally nailed the coffin shut. Yet the interest in proving that Wild Bill had survived was such that an exhumation of the gunslinger's skeleton was made in 2001. Its DNA matched that of one of Longley's descendants. (Houston Chronicle, June 14,2001).

Science has also disproved the ridiculous myth about the centenarian Jesse James: the 1882 remains were exhumed, and its mitochondrial DNA matched that of two of Jesse's descendants. (APC news April 8, 2000; A. C. Stone et al. In Journal of Forensic Sciences 46, 2001 pp. 173-76).

There are several twentieth-century examples of the unexpected death of a famous public character triggering the creation of a similar myth. When Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, was lost at, sea in 1916, rumors spread that he lived on as a captive, having been taken to Germany in a U-boat, or that he had become a hermit living on an isolated island. When Amelia Earhart, the celebrated aviator, disappeared in 1937, rumors started to fly that she had been captured by the Japanese or that she had faked her own death to escape from the public eye, finally ending up in a New Jersey retirement home in the 1970s. On Kitchener, see Lockhart, Here Are Mysteries, pp. 227-51, and D. McCormick, The Mystery of Lord Kitchener's Death (London, 1959). On Amelia Earhart, see J. Klass, Amelia Earhart Lives (New York, 1970), and Rife, Premature Burials, pp. 78-89.

The case of Elvis Presley has many of the typical components of the "immortal king" legend. It has been alleged that, like Alexander I of Russia, the king had become tired of fame and riches and wanted to withdraw from the world. As the duke of Portland was presumed to have done, he had a wax effigy made, complete with large bushy sideburns, to persuade the many fans attending his lying in state in Memphis that he was really dead. The coffin was also presumed to contain portable refrigeration equipment to prevent the wax dummy from melting in the hot weather; the result was that the ten pallbearers were groaning under its weight as they struggled to carry it to the grave. (G. Brewer-Giogio, Is Elvis Alive?, 1988, and Rife, Premature Burials, pp. 129-33).
The madcap speculation that J. F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe are still alive, or that Jim Morrison (of the Doors) and John Lennon faked their deaths to escape into obscurity, is in the same vein as the tale of the immortal Elvis. Another well-known example of an "immortal" modern celebrity is Diana, Princess of Wales. Her tragic death in Paris stunned the world, and it did not take long for urban legends to grow about what really happened in the tunnel underneath the Seine where the Mercedes carrying the princess and her entourage crashed in 1997. Conspiracy theories have abounded. Had she been murdered by the British secret service for wanting to marry her "unsuitable" lover Dodi al-Fayed, the son of Mohammad al-Fayed, the owner of the famous Harrods department store in London? Or had the queen and the duke of Edinburgh decided that she had to be killed, for Prince Charles to be able to marry his longtime paramour Camilla Parker Bowles? Another conspiracy theory was that the princess had decided to fake her own death. Like Alexander I of Russia and Elvis Presley, she was supposed to have tired of being chased by the media, and decided to retire to a quiet life with young al-Fayed. There have been alleged sightings of Diana in Hong Kong and Japan, and conspiracy theorists have presumed that she lives with al-Fayed in an Asian island paradise. This leaves unexplained why she has not contacted her two sons, but there has been speculation on the Internet that she visited them incognito in the guise of a royal nanny, after having undergone extensive plastic surgery to change her appearance. (More realistic, is the recent movie by Stephen Frears “The Queen,” with Helen Mirren and and James Cromwell).

Then there is the of legend of the mysterious simpleton-a child or young adult who suddenly appears out of nowhere, unable to explain his or her history and origins. The mysterious simpleton is taken care of by the kindly local people, but there is soon speculation that he or she must be someone of very high birth, who has been rendered unable to enjoy the privileges of nobility by accident or by stratagem. The mystery of Kaspar Hauser is the most famous example of this type of legend, but by no means the only one. In 1776, a young woman was begging in the villages near Bristol. A beautiful, fragile-looking creature, she was obviously of superior breeding. She refused to live in a house, preferring to sleep in a haystack just outside the village of Bourton. This singular habit made "Louisa, the Lady of the Haystack," a well-known local curiosity. (G. H. Wilson, Eccentric Mirror 3, no. 2,1807, pp. 1-36).

She could speak good English, although it was noted that she was obviously of foreign birth. Louisa's friends advertised widely in German, Austrian, and French newspapers to find out whether any well-bred young lady had been lost in either of these countries, but they received no replies of interest. Louisa's mind became increasingly feeble and clouded, and she was finally incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. But in the 1780s a pamphlet appeared in the French language, describing how a certain Count Cobenzel, the Austrian minister at Brussels, had been charged with taking care of a mysterious young lady. She had been brought up by two old women in an isolated house, but was sometimes visited by a handsome officer who showed her much kindness. Once, in the Austrian embassy, she fainted dead away when she recognized her benefactor in a large portrait-a painting of the late Emperor Francis of Austria.

After traveling on to Bordeaux, she became known as Mademoiselle La Fruelen and received generous financial support from wealthy noblemen. Her great likeness (but so is that of Helen Mirren in the above mentioned movie) to the late emperor was remarked upon by Count Cobenzel and others, and caused much gossip in town. Suddenly, her benefactors withdrew their support, and she was arrested for debt and taken to the count's house. The dowager empress made public her belief that Mademoiselle La Fruelen was an impostor claiming to be a natural daughter of the late emperor. The pamphlet leaves it unstated what means were taken to dispose of Mademoiselle La Fruellen. Louisa's friends in Bristol at once suspected that she had lost her reason as a result of her sufferings and been set at liberty in the English countryside, where her enemies thought no one would recognize her. Thus the Lady of the Haystacks was none other than the daughter of Francis I, emperor of Austria. Poor Louisa's clouded mind gave few clues as to her identity, although her friends questioned her as closely as Feuerbach and others had interrogated Kaspar Hauser in trying to uncover his true identity. It was considered significant that she laughed merrily whenever anyone spoke German and that she said, "That is papa's own country! " when Bohemia was mentioned in the conversation It is obvious, however, that Louisa's claim suffers from a similar lad of hard evidence and surfeit of sentimental speculation as the myth of Kaspar's Baden princedom. There are hints of the mysterious simpleton also in the strange tale of Princess Caraboo.

In April 1817, a mysterious young girl appearee in the village of Almondbury, in Gloucestershire. Lost and penniless she appeared to speak no European language. She kept repeating the word "Caraboo," and it was presumed this was her name. The kind people gave her food and shelter and put much effort into finding out who this mysterious simpleton might be. She dressed in strange Oriental garb, armed herself with a bow and arrows, and performed wild dervish-like dances. When the vicar showed her some Chinese prints she appeared to recognize them. Several experts came to see her to find out which language she spoke, but the great linguists were confounded by her strange gibberish. To trick Caraboo, a witty cleric sneaked up behind her and whispered "You are the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! You are an angel!" When she did not show any sign of feminine modesty, it was concluded that she was no impostor Finally, a Portuguese gentleman delighted everybody when he declared that he understood every word she said. She was Princes Caraboo, a native of a small island near Sumatra, who had been kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery, before escaping and swimming ashore when the ship was sheltering from a storm. Princess Caraboo lived in comfort at the local manor house and then moved on to Bath, where she found new admirers. A certain Dr. Wilkinson showed great interest and persistence in deciphering her strange language and wrote a series of articles about her in the local newspapers. One of these had the unexpected result that a landlady named Mrs. Neale appeared, saying that the information given made her certain the princess was the servant girl Mary Baker, who had previously lodged in her house. Caraboo confessed that this was indeed the case. She had been tramping around the countryside with some Gypsies and picked up their language, which she enjoyed using to confound the linguists. She had sworn the Portuguese man into her joke, with excellent effect. It was never divulged what had prompted this remarkable imposture in the first place.

 

*comment in reference to the above mentioned "Marguerite Marie Therese O'Dea d'Audibert de Lussan" Our co- worker Richard Hall who was the first to unveil the Marguerite Marie Therese O'Dea d'Audibert de Lussan reference wrote:

Although evidence rules against the existence of a “Comtesse de Massillan,” at least as presented in The Forgotten Monarchy and certainly not as the second wife of Prince Charles Edward Stewart, I could not, initially, identify the somewhat engaging portrait of the “Comtesse.” The author claims that the portrait is the work of the French Court Painter, Laurent Pechaux (1729 -1812) who, he states, painted the “Comtesse” in 1785 – the year of her alleged marriage to Prince Charles Edward Stewart.

Pechaux was indeed painter to the Stuart Court. His appointment was made by the de jure King Charles lll following the death of the “Old Pretender” – James.  Pechaux performed his first commission by painting Charles.  A further commission to paint Louise of Stolberg soon after her wedding in April 1772 followed this.  However, no publication on art history lists “de Massillan” as a subject of Pechaux or anyone else.

The Picture Credits in Forgotten Monarchy indicate that either the original portrait, or a reproduction, is located in the frequently cited “Stewart Achieves.” This repository is variously described as being in Scotland or in Brussels. According to the author, it appears to accommodate an additional 28 portraits, among many other items of “evidence.”  Despite some clearly fabricated identities, claiming to be of researchers studying the collection, no reputable scholar has ever even heard of the “Stewart Archives.”  Of the three pictures that could not be identified, I did not deem two of them of sufficient importance to continue the search. It was the actual identity of the most crucial of these - the alleged “Marguerite Marie Therese O’Dea d’Aubert de Lussan, Comtesse de Massillan,” that presented the real challenge.

The National Galleries of Scotland became enthusiastic collaborators, as did the Art Department of the Australian National University and the Australian National Gallery.  Advice was sought and received from Guy Stair Sainty who suggested that Jean Marc Nattier might be the artist.  He totally rejected the possibility that the subject was the “Comtesse de Massillan”. I spent some time trying to identify the complete inventory of the work of Jean Marc Nattier. The style and period were generally in favor of the artist. However, my own research and correspondence with galleries and art dealers around the world failed to deliver a positive identification. Appeals to some French institutions were particularly unrewarding. None of my queries written in English were answered. Initially, I was not confident enough to try my hand in the language of Voltaire and Victor Hugo but with the assistance of a more gifted family member, we did craft a request, in French, to one institution.  The effort had its own reward and I received a gracious and comprehensive reply.

A doughty comrade in the search of the truth kindly displayed a copy of the “de Massillan” portrait on a web site where negative comments on Lafosse had been made. It should be acknowledged that they were just as often disputed – usually on other web sites.    

We placed a “Wanted” sign beneath the picture and invited assistance in identifying her.  In due course, this did attract a French family (there appeared to be three members alternating with their comments) who claimed that it was the “Comtesse de Massillan” and that they knew how she was related to the Scottish claimant.  We engaged in a number of frustrating exchanges.  The quality of the debate was not particularly high. I tried stoically to withstand a number of insults of which being a “bleating sheep” was one of the more original. I was provided with a collection of papers, mostly in French, which, with the assistance of yet another family member, we laboriously translated.  It was not a profitable exercise. The papers were mainly irrelevant or came from dubious sources. I shall comment on the profile of the La Fosse client-base elsewhere.

In September 2006, I found a reference to an interesting Internet web site - “Art Watch.”  Having declared my interest in my correspondence with the Director, I hoped that I might find a new direction in pursuit of the identification of “de Massillan.” Director Michael Daly, referred me to the Witt Library of the Coultauld Institute of Art, a London organization that specialized in cataloguing portraits reproduced in publications.  In a remarkably short time Annette Lloyd-Morgan, the Deputy Librarian provided me with a copy of the library data card plus a copy of a brief biography of Julie Jeanne Eleanore de Lespinasse (1732-76) by Dr Richardiere of Paris. It was attached to the back of the card. The inference was that someone had suggested that the unidentified female subject was, in fact, a notable French woman of letters.

This pastel portrait is by Maurice Quentin La Tour. It is displayed in the Musée Lecuyer in Saint Quentin, France. It is clearly the same portrait presented by Lafosse as the “Comtesse de Massillan” and claimed to be the work of Laurent Pechaux. The Musée Lecuyer has no record of permission being sought by “Prince Michael Stewart of Albany” to reproduce the portrait.

The Subject. The genuine portrait is titled “Inconnue” (Unknown Women). It is not known if this is the title assigned by the artist or a subsequent cataloguer. I favor the latter. Artists generally did not assign a title to portraits.  For contemporary viewers, the portrait would identify itself.  It was usually later that art historians (or sellers) provided a title – sometimes it was not correct. The files of the Musée Antoine Lécuyer, whilst rather meager, also have a post card with the reference  -  “Mademoiselle de Lepinasse.” (?)  The Director does not know who has put forward [this] hypothesis. Whilst the apparent lack of confirmed identity of the subject might give some comfort to those clinging to the hope that the subject really is the “Comtesse de Massillan,” there is not the slightest doubt over the identity of the artist, where the work is displayed, or the title by which it is known and catalogued.  There is also a clear inference that the subject might be Mademoiselle de Lepinasse. Certainly, the dates of the presence of de Lespinasse and La Tour in Paris allow for the possibility of contact.  The prominent position of the young woman in Paris society could well have caught the attention of La Tour. He produced portraits of Rousseau, Voltaire, Louis XV, his queen, the dauphin and dauphiness, Mme de Pompadour and Prince Charles Edward Stewart. Artistically and socially, Julie de Lespinasse would certainly not have been out of place in this company.

A useful biography of Julie de Lespinasse may be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The relevant elements of this article, which mirrors the comments of Dr Richardiere, are as follows:

Julie was born in Lyons in 1732. She was the illegitimate child of Comtesse d’Albon and was brought up as the daughter of Claude Lespinasse, also of Lyon. Following her schooling at the local convent school, she became governess to the children of her mother’s legitimate daughter (Madame de Vichy) who was the sister-in- law of Madame du Deffand.

Marie de Vichy-Charmrond, Marquise du Deffand, was a leading figure in French society, famous for her witty letters to the Duchesse de Choiseul, to Voltaire and to Horace Walpole. From the beginning of her intellectual life, she expressed herself to be an unbeliever and a skeptic.  At one stage, at the request of her mother, the celebrated French preacher and bishop of Clermont (Auvergne) Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663 -1742) was invited to reason with her.  Both mother and preacher were to be disappointed.

Madame du Deffand was the centre of a brilliant circle of intellectuals in Paris.  In 1754, with her sight nearly gone, she invited the precocious Julie to join her as her as a companion. 10 years later, and jealous of the young woman’s influence, Madame de Deffand dismissed her and suffered the indignity of being eclipsed by the popularity of Julie’s own salon, to which many of Madame’s former circle were drawn.

Meanwhile Julie indulged her passion for her role as the most sought-after hostess in Paris. Although not known at the time she also had a passion for letter writing.  It was not until Mme de Guibert published a collection of these letters in 1809 that the intensity of her relationships received literary acclaim.  Less discrete was her passion, first for the Marquis de Mora, and then for the Comte de Guibert.  Mora died in 1774. Then the agitation and misery surrounding her affair with the worthless Guibert resulted in a total mental and physical collapse.  She died on 22 May 1776 at the age of 44.

The Artist. Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788) was a leading French pastelist. He was born at St Quentin on the 5th of September 1704. After leaving Picardy for Paris in 1727 he entered the studio of Spoede - an upright man, but a poor master, rector of the academy of St Luke, who still continued the traditions of the old guild of the master painters of Paris. This possibly contributed to the adoption by La Tour of a line of work foreign to that imposed by an academic training; for pastels, though occasionally used, were not a principal and distinct branch of work until 1720. In 1737, he exhibited the first of a sumptuous series of 150 portraits that became the feature of the salon for nearly 40 years. In 1750, he was appointed “painter to the (French) king.” In 1746, he was received into the academy. In the following year to that in which he received the title of “painter to the king”, he was promoted to the grade of “councilor.” His work had the rare merit of satisfying at once both the taste of his fashionable models and the judgment of his brother artists. The museum of St Quentin also possesses a magnificent collection of works which at his death were in his own hands. La Tour retired to St Quentin at the age of eighty, and there he died on the 17th of February 1788. He endowed St Quentin with a great number of useful and charitable institutions. He never married. His brother survived him, and left the drawings to the town.  They are now displayed in the museum.

The method used by the Claimant in his artistic deceptions becomes even more obvious when he captions a portrait claimed to be a cousin of Charles Edward’s second wife. This is the person whom the Claimant alleges was used as “a decoy when Charles made secret trips to Britain.” By way of comparison, a second portrait is shown, this time claiming that it is of the genuine Prince Charles Edward.

It was not difficult to identify the source of two portraits in The Forgotten Monarchy. A book by Donald Nicholas was an obvious reference source. It contains an extensive collection of portraits of “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” One of them is located with the Irish Dominicans of San Clemente in Rome. It was once described as a portrait of the Chevalier de St George, by whom this is meant James the “Old Pretender.” The identity of the artist is uncertain.  However, no student of art history would now regard the subject as being anyone other than Bonnie Prince Charlie, albeit, far from his bonnie best! All are clearly the same work.

Update 29 Oct. 2006: See next a detailed overview of the Michael Stewart-Albany/Lafosse case by our co-worker Richard Hall.

Update 5 Nov. 2006: Review of Michael Stewart-Albany's second new book, and our co-worker Richard Hall's own extensive book proposal tilted A KING BEST FORGOTTEN.

Update 12 March 2016:  At his side, attached to his belt, he carried a sword, and in his hands he held a huge wreath of flowers in the red and white colours of the Polish flag. He appeared disdainful and rather aloof – clearly "a somebody" – and just behind him strode two rather overweight gentlemen, also in kilts and sky blue doublets, and covered in every kind of Highland accoutrement you can imagine, dirks, powder horns, bonnets, sashes, dingly dangly orders and decoration, and firmly clamped in their right hands, drawn claymore swords. "Yes, His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Albany"

 

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