Secrets of Iron: The Man in the Iron Mask

The year is 1703. The Day is the 19th of November. In France, a prisoner just died after 34 years behind bars. The death was kept quiet. The burial was rushed. And things continued as if nothing had happened. Usually, such an occurrence was of little consequence. After all, prisoners died all the time. One dying was about as noteworthy as losing a horse to lameness, or to birth complications that imperiled mothers and newborns. This particular prisoner, though, was unlike any other. The purpose of his imprisonment wasn’t to punish for a crime committed - at least, not just that. The purpose, the real purpose, you could say, was to erase him from the face of the earth, to make it as if he didn’t even exist, shut away and left to fade like an old memory.