Why Kings Confess by C. S. Harris

February 6, 2020

Why Kings Confess by C. S. Harris

When a French physician is found brutally murdered in a London alley, the authorities are quick to write off the crime as the work of footpads (what we would call a mugger).  When surgeon Paul Gibson examines the body, he discovers that not only was the man stabbed in the back, but his heart was also removed.  He turns to his aristocratic friend Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, who agrees that a street thief is unlikely to cut out a man’s heart but leave his purse in his pocket.  St. Cyr decides to investigate, little knowing that his inquiries will lead him to the exiled French royal family living in England and a woman that he last encountered in Spain while serving in the army.

I think this is one of the best of the St. Cyr mysteries so far, well-researched and seamlessly blending fictional characters with historical figures.  This novel focuses less on Sebastian's past and more on his present life with his new wife Hero and the impending birth of their child.  Hero is a marvelous character, a kick-ass, take no prisoners woman – even at nine months’ pregnant, she manages to brain a ruffian with a fireplace poker.  Although she still manages to change her clothes five or six times a day like all the women in Regency fiction.

The title of the book comes from a conversation that Sebastian and Hero have, regarding the divine right of kings (which the Bourbons, the French royal family, certainly believed in).  They discuss why a king would bother to go to confession if he believes that his existence is sanctioned by God and that he can do no wrong.

Be sure to read the author’s notes at the end.  Here’s a synopsis:

Both children of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were at first imprisoned with their mother and their aunt Elisabeth, but after Louis XVI was executed, Louis-Charles (age 7, now Louis XVII) was taken away and imprisoned in a different part of the prison.  Royalist reports claim he was beaten and starved by his captors, and walled up in a single room.  Whatever happened to him, he was certainly neglected and died in prison at age 10.  Almost immediately, rumors began to fly that the real Louis-Charles had been removed from prison by his supporters and that a deaf-mute peasant child suffering from advanced tuberculosis was substituted in his place.  Thus the legend of the “Lost Dauphin” was born (similar to the story that one of the Russian Grand Duchesses escaped execution during the Russian Revolution).

Charles-Louis' sister Marie-Therese, age 15 when their parents were executed, remained alone and in prison until December 1795 when she was released and sent to Vienna in exchange for several high-ranking French prisoners.  She eventually married her cousin Louis-Antoine and the whole family moved to England.  When her brother died in prison, Marie-Therese was not shown his body and spent the rest of her life wondering if Louis-Charles had somehow escaped.  Numerous imposters presented themselves to her as her missing brother.  Marie-Therese herself was most likely abused by her captors, and at least one contemporary letter notes that Marie-Therese was raped in prison, resulting in a pregnancy.  By all accounts, Marie-Therese was traumatized by the events of the French Revolution and possibly half-mad, and lived an unhappy life waiting for the Bourbons to be restored to the French throne.