[1] She slept in the same room as Marie Thérèse, dressed the same way, ate the same food, was educated with her by the royal governesses and treated the same way materially.

[1] This was in fact not an uncommon thing in Europe in this time period, when royal children were sometimes given foster siblings as playmates, which were in no way acknowledged in public life.

[2] Armand left the royal family after the outbreak of the revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes.

[1] On the 10 August 1792, Marie Antoinette ordered the royal sub-governess Renée Suzanne de Soucy to bring Ernestine to safety.

A theory claims that Marie-Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, swapped identities with her adoptive sister, Ernestine Lambriquet, when she was released from the Temple.

[1] Theories as to why Marie-Thérèse made the switch abound; she is speculated to have been raped and gotten pregnant or to have suffered trauma and wanted to disappear.

Her companion, Leonardus Cornelius Van Der Valck (called the Dark Count) lived there until his death on 8 April 1845.

DNA analysis conducted in 2013[3] has disproved the conjecture that the Dark Countess was the true Princess Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France.

The remains of the Dark Countess were exhumed, and bone fragments were analyzed at independent laboratories in Innsbruck, Austria, and Freiburg, Germany.

If the Dark Countess was truly Marie-Thérèse, the bone fragments would have had the same mtDNA profile as Alexander (whose maternal line crosses with Marie Antoinette’s mother, Maria Theresa of Austria).

Furthermore, the mtDNA of Marie Thérèse’s brother (Louis-Charles) determined in a previous study[4] matched that of Prince Alexander, as expected, but differed from the Dark Countess.