Prince Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was imprisoned during the French Revolution and believed to have died in prison.

He claimed that he had been substituted with a deaf and mute orphan who died soon afterward and that he had been hidden in a secret area of the Tower of the Temple until his escape.

In 1833, Naundorff travelled to Paris where another claimant to the French throne, the Baron de Richemont, was on trial.

Despite the fact that Naundorff did not speak French very well, he managed to convince various former members of Louis XVI's court that he was the Dauphin.

He still had some supporters because the epitaph on his grave reads "Here lies Louis XVII, King of France" and in his death certificate he is named as "Charles-Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Normandy (Louis XVII), who was known under the name of Charles-Guillaume Naundorff, [...] son of His Majesty the late Louis XVI, King of France and of Her Imperial and Royal Highness Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of France, who both died in Paris".

Some of them insisted on using the surname "de Bourbon" and they petitioned for recognition to French courts and senates all through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Circus director René Charles de Bourbon, an illegitimate son of one of Naundorff's grandchildren, lost his claim in a French court in 1954.

A handful of French historians insist that DNA testing finally resolved the issue of Naundorff's claim.