Louis XVI of France

"(People, I die innocent. Gentlemen, I am innocent of everything I have been charged with. My wish and hope is that my blood may consolidate the well-being of the French people.)"

- Louis XVI at his execution, 1793.

Louis XVI of France (born Louis-Auguste de France, duc de Berry; 1754 – 1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, after which he was subsequently King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before his deposition and execution during the French Revolution.

Early life
Born as the third son of and the grandson of King Louis XV, Louis-Auguste was never expected to become king. Instead, his parents attention went to his eldest brother and heir to the throne,. In 1761 however, the 9-year-old heir died of tuberculosis. Louis-Auguste's father died of the same disease four years later, making the former Dauphin at the age of 11. His mother,, never recovered from the shock of losing her eldest son and husband, and died of tuberculosis herself in 1767.

Having been largely ignored in his childhood, Louis-Auguste appears to have received many of his characteristic traits from his tutors. They taught him that austerity and aloofness were desirable attributes for a king and showed strong character, instead of encouraging him to be decisive and personable.

In May 1770, the 15-year-old Louis-Auguste married his second cousin once removed, the 14-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia, better known as Marie Antoinette, in an arranged marriage. The celebrations of their wedding ended in tragedy when one hundred Parisians were killed following a stampede at a fireworks display. The young Archduchess found her marriage to the shy and ineffectual Louis-Auguste unpleasant and lackluster, as their personalities were complete opposites. While he retired to bed before midnight and got up early in the morning, she enjoyed partying and gambling and slept until the afternoon.

Early reign
He was a great supporter of the American Revolutionary War which, by 1789, resulted in the kingdom descending to ruin as the debt-ridden France progressed into a state of bankruptcy. The situation was further exacerbated by the trade treaty with London, in that London was way ahead of the French technologically and inundated France with their industrial products, spelling ruin for French artisans. In this vein, some of the aforementioned products would be used in the revolutionary riots.

In summer of 1791, with the French Revolution heating up, Louis secretly fled to supposedly loyal troops in the East. When the grounds of the Tuileries were invaded, Louis took refuge in the National Assembly where he was arrested soon after and stripped of his power, before being sent to the Temple.

Those who testified on Louis' behalf were killed in two instances, while documents that could have proven his innocence were not passed on to his defenders. Louis was thereby executed on January 21, 1793 at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Before his death, Louis pleaded to the crowd that he was innocent, but hoped that his death would be for the good of France.

Louis had, in secret, somehow acquired a First Civilization artifact at an unknown date. He later placed the artifact in a small chest and hid it in a secret vault in his private study at Palais des Tuileries. This vault was discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte and the Assassin Arno Dorian in 1792, as both men vied two different things from it – Arno, letters incriminating Mirabeau, and Napoleon, the chest containing the artifact; once Napoleon had retrieved the artifact, he quickly concealed it to prevent Arno from noticing it.

Trivia

 * Unity ' s depiction of Louis' trial differs vastly from actual history, being presented as more of a frame-up, with Louis being blamed for the famine that had been artificially orchestrated by the Templars. In real life, Louis' trial centered on his conspiring with foreign powers and sabotaging the revolutionary movement; even those that wanted to spare his life admitted he was guilty of the charges.