A história está repleta de mortes, vidas e lendas misteriosas de crianças reais. Algumas questões estão profundamente enterradas no tempo para serem resolvidas e permanecerão enigmas tentadores. Mas noutros casos, a tecnologia moderna e as sepulturas antigas começam finalmente a revelar algumas respostas há muito esperadas.
10 O filho desaparecido de Maria Antonieta
Durante cerca de 200 anos, ninguém soube dizer o que aconteceu ao filho de Maria Antonieta, rainha de França. O rei sem coroa de oito anos chamava-se Luís XVII. Ele foi trancado na prisão do Templo em Paris durante a Revolução Francesa, um evento que resultou na perda de cabeça de ambos os pais na guilhotina. Dois anos depois, diz a lenda que ele teria sido contrabandeado para fora da prisão. Um corpo falecido de um sósia foi colocado em seu lugar. Como as condições de prisão eram angustiantes e ele também sofria abusos físicos, não houve surpresa quando a notícia da morte do príncipe chegou ao público em 8 de junho de 1795.
Desde então, quase 100 pessoas afirmaram ser o rei desaparecido e o governante legítimo da França, mas as suas histórias foram divulgadas quando testes de ADN realizados em 2000 num coração preservado os desmascararam como pretendentes. O órgão era da criança falecida na prisão, guardado como lembrança macabra pelo médico que fez a autópsia. Quando comparado ao material genético enxertado de mechas de cabelo de Maria Antonieta, o coração combinava. Isso desmentiu a história popular sobre a fuga do pequeno Louis com a ajuda de funcionários que tiveram pena dele. O menino rei sucumbiu tragicamente na prisão, mortalmente doente com tuberculose, sozinho e sem nome durante dois séculos.
O coração foi enterrado com todas as honras reais perto do túmulo de seus pais. Mais de 2.000 pessoas, incluindo a realeza europeia, compareceram ao funeral.
9 O Filho Primogênito do Faraó
Vários historiadores dão um nome ao herdeiro do faraó que morreu durante a praga bíblica que atingiu os primogênitos do Egito: Amon-her Khepeshef . Indo um passo adiante, o respeitado egiptólogo Kent Weeks agora acredita que encontrou Amon-ela em carne e osso. Bem, nos ossos.
Weeks estava trabalhando em um gigantesco complexo funerário no Egito quando sua equipe fez o que poderia ser uma descoberta histórica. Como numa cena de filme, encontraram muitas salas funerárias decoradas com cenas artísticas e inscrições retratando a vida de Ramsés II e seus filhos. Ramsés é o faraó mais indicado pelos estudiosos da Bíblia para a posição de “bandido” no livro do Êxodo. As descobertas mais reveladoras foram jarros canópicos com o nome de Amun-her Khepeshef e possivelmente seus órgãos. Havia também quatro corpos numa cova perto da entrada do túmulo, todos do sexo masculino. Um dos esqueletos estava disposto em uma postura real e tinha o crânio gravemente quebrado. A reconstrução facial do corpo assassinado de 3.000 anos mostrou que ele tinha as características pontiagudas, marca registrada da família de Ramsés II.
Amun-her era um general militar e o dano no crânio é consistente com um ferimento com maça. No entanto, o mistério permanece. O corpo é o lendário primogênito bíblico ou um dos outros filhos de Ramsés II? O teste de DNA não é possível neste momento devido à condição degradada do tecido. De qualquer forma, Amun-her morreu antes de seu pai, quando ele tinha quase quarenta ou cinquenta e poucos anos.
8 Paulo I da Rússia
Russia’s Catherine the Great gave birth to her heir, Paul , in 1754. Since Catherine’s husband, Peter III, was more interested in playing with toy soldiers and his mistress, it’s possible that the infant was the illegitimate bastard of Sergei Saltykov, a military officer who might have been Catherine’s lover. Either way, she wasn’t an affectionate mother. Young Paul’s parents despised each other. The marriage troubles eventually reached a deadly standoff . Paul was only eight years old when Peter III, the man he thought of as his father, was poisoned. This left him convinced in his later years that his mother was plotting to murder him, too.
However, while his suspicions about murderous schemes were correct, Paul was focusing on the wrong enemy. Catherine the Great felt her son would make an incompetent tsar, but her way of dealing with it was to groom his son Alexander as her heir instead. Unfortunately for Catherine, a stroke felled her before she could make it official, and Paul took the throne.
Catherine’s fears were not unfounded; Paul was indeed a neurotic and useless leader. His death is as much a whodunit as his paternity. He was strangled with a scarf. The mystery surrounds his son, Alexander, who might have been in cahoots with the assassins. The young Grand Duke Alexander had attended a dinner earlier that night with his father, but he had eaten almost nothing and appeared uncomfortable. One of the killers also visited his rooms while the rest of the assassins finished off the tsar.
7 Prince Arthur
In 1486, an English prince was born and named after the fabled King Arthur of Camelot. When the Prince Arthur of Wales was barely 15 years old, he was placed in an arranged marriage with Catarina de Aragão , daughter of Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. The union, meant to strengthen the alliance between Spain and England, didn’t last long. Five months after the wedding, Prince Arthur died from a “sweating sickness,” a mystery affliction that hasn’t been solved to this day.
The teenager, who’d been frail for most of his short life, lived with his new bride at Ludlow Castle near the Welsh border. Their home was inexplicably far away from the prince’s London doctors. His wife and several other people in the area also contracted the unknown epidemic, which some theorize to be tuberculosis or more likely a hantavírus . Catherine survived.
In 2002, archaeologists found Arthur’s tomb under the limestone floor of Worcester Cathedral and hope to one day use non-invasive techniques to determine what killed the heir to the throne. His widow married Arthur’s younger brother, who eventually became Henry VIII . She was one of the few wives to survive his nasty spouse-killing habit.
6 Menelik
Menelik era o filho que o rei Salomão teve com a rainha de Sabá . Se acreditarmos nos etíopes, ele também é a razão pela qual nenhum turista hoje pode tirar uma foto com a Arca da Aliança.
O mito fundador da Etiópia conta como Menelik foi criado por sua mãe no reino dela, mas quando adulto acabou se encontrando com seu pai em Jerusalém. Quando Salomão ofereceu a Menelik a oportunidade de se tornar seu herdeiro oficialmente reconhecido e governar após sua morte, a grata descendência real decidiu fugir com a Arca da Aliança.
Apesar do facto de a Rainha de Sabá ser mencionada tanto na Bíblia como no Alcorão, a sua existência – e muito menos a do seu filho – permanece em grande parte não comprovada. Diz-se que Menelik aprendeu a religião de seu pai e trouxe o judaísmo ao seu povo, uma religião ainda hoje praticada na Etiópia. O que permanece um mistério interessante para a maioria é um assunto sério para um monge em Aksum, onde a Arca da Aliança supostamente permanece sob sua proteção vitalícia no santuário mais sagrado da Etiópia. Milhares de anos impediram que alguém encontrasse ou publicasse provas da vida do rei Menelik, mas para alguém que talvez nunca tenha existido, ele teve uma influência notável na identidade, na história e na religião de um país.
5 Neto da Victoria’s Secret
Embora nunca tenha sido provado, um boato persistente cerca uma das filhas da Rainha Vitória, a Princesa Louise . Notas históricas sobre Louise são conhecidas por descrever sua beleza, disposição rebelde e rumores de casos de amor. A biógrafa Lucinda Hawksley acredita que a princesa teve um filho ilegitimo com um dos servos, um homem chamado Walter Stirling.
Stirling era o tutor particular do irmão mais novo de Louise, e sua demissão após apenas quatro meses no cargo e o tratamento subsequente pela família real não eram exatamente padrão. Stirling nunca mais trabalhou para eles, mas continuou a receber uma mesada. O bebê era supostamente um menino chamado Henry, nascido em 1866 ou 1867, quando Louise estava no final da adolescência. Ele não recebeu certidão de nascimento e foi rapidamente adotado por outro membro da equipe real, Sir Frederick Locock, ginecologista da Rainha Vitória.
Embora ninguém ainda tenha provado se a história é real ou não, os descendentes de Sir Frederick Locock e sua família certamente o são. A família Locock tem feito lobby por testes de DNA desde 2004 – sem sucesso.
4 A Casa das Crianças Reais
Em meados do século XIX, Henry Rhind, um egiptólogo escocês, estava escavando em Tebas quando encontrou um antigo enterro em massa . Todos os corpos pertenciam a princesas egípcias. Não se sabe muito sobre eles, e uma inscrição que lhes dá o título coletivo de “Casa dos Filhos Reais” abre um mistério que poderá não ser resolvido por muito tempo.
Nobody is really sure what sort of institution the House of Royal Children was—only that it was populated by palace women and girls of royal blood and that something wiped them out. Many of the names recorded in the tomb are recognizable, such as Tiaa, the sister of Pharaoh Amenhotep III who most likely ruled the mysterious female-only residence. Other familiar names paint a picture of three generations living together, and there is a big chance that they also died together.
For so many princesses from one pharaoh’s reign to be buried in the same place hints that they were interred as a group and not individually over a period of time. Inscriptions mention the deaths of an embalmer and possibly some of the women’s servants during the same time. If the reason was some sort of infectious disease, it is likely that the House of Royal Children was physically demolished to prevent its spread—at the cost of an interesting piece Egyptian culture.
3 Saint Dmitry
When it comes to the crown princes of Russia, two of them always steal the show. The hemophilic Alexei Romanov was murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The equally unfortunate Ivan was murdered by his own father, Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Shortly after the tsar fatally clobbered his son, his wife gave birth to another boy. When the infant Dmitry was two years old, his father died. Dmitry’s older half brother ascended the throne and became Tsar Feodor I. At the same time, the toddler was exiled to the small town of Uglich.
The sickly Tsar Feodor I wasn’t expected to produce an heir, so Dmitry became the Tsarevich. But in 1591, the nine-year-old crown prince met his end under mysterious circumstances. Officially, he had a knife in his hand, suffered a seizure, and stabbed himself in the neck by accident. Considering the dangerous political environment he lived in and an official death investigation full of irregularities, it’s equally plausible that he was knocked out by an ambitious throne seeker.
One legend holds that he was killed on the orders of Boris Godunov, who eventually became the tsar. Dmitry’s mother also acusou Godunov of the killing. The boy’s death will probably never be solved, but despite his short life, he is not forgotten. In 1606, 15 years after his death, Dmitry was declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.
2 Little Caesar
The son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra only lived for 17 anos —officially. He was born in the year 47 BC , three years before Caesar’s murder. During that time, the toddler ruled over Egypt together with Cleopatra. Depending on the source, the little pharaoh may or may not have been acknowledged by Caesar as his son.
Caesarion, or “ Litte Caesar ” as he was sometimes called, was the king of Egypt, but for some mysterious reason, his name was smudged from all official documents after he turned 10. One theory is that Cleopatra wanted to continue her dynasty through the twins she later bore with Marc Antony, but this remains unproven.
When Caesarion was a teenager, he became a pawn in a deadly power struggle between Marc Antony and a nephew of Julius Caesar, Octavian. Marc Antony and Octavian shared the rule of Rome, but each wanted full power. Antony tried to tout the boy as the more worthy to rule as Caesar’s supposed son, which no doubt made Octavian determined to kill the young pharaoh.
Tensions came to a climax, and when Octavian crushed Antony’s army, which was financed by Cleopatra, both she and Antony committed suicide. Her son had already fled Egypt, and what happened next is hazy. Stories differ. Caesarion may have been murdered on his way to Ethiopia. He could have been strangled after he was lured back to Egypt by the Romans. Maybe he escaped. His body was never found. Whatever the case, the young king was gone when Octavian became the sole ruler of Egypt and Rome.
1 The Missing Romanovs
One of the most intriguing royal puzzles was always that of Anastasia, one of two Romanov siblings missing from the mass grave that contained their slaughtered family’s remains. In 2007, another grave was unearthed about 70 meters (230 ft) from the first.
The find was shocking. It revealed the brutalized remains of two murdered children . One was a boy in his early teens and the other a girl between the ages of 17 and 24. Forty-four bone fragments and some teeth were recovered, all badly burnt and shattered. Due to the close proximity to the grave site of the tsar and his family, tests were performed to see if the skeletons were the two imperial children who had never been found. Three different genetic tests were used to reach absolute certainty. When those results came back, they ended one of the world’s greatest mysteries and the claims of Anastasia pretenders everywhere. They were the missing Tsarevich Alexei Romanov and one of his sisters.
But questions still remain. Why they were buried in a separate grave cannot be explained, and then there’s the elusive identity of the sister found with Alexei. Was it Maria or Anastasia? Anthropologists don’t agree. One thing is certain though: All the bodies of the Romanov girls are now accounted for, which means that Anastasia didn’t survive her family’s execution in 1918. Whichever grave was hers, she died on the same terrible night that brought an end to the 304-year-old Romanov dynasty.
