'Dark Countess' tomb exhumed to solve 200-year-old mystery Officially, Marie-Thérèse, also known as Madame Royale, survived the Reign of Terror, fled to Vienna before marrying her cousin, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of the future Charles X. She was technically Queen of France for 20 minutes in 1830 before her husband was forced to abdicate. They went on to live in exile in Edinburgh, Prague and Vienna. Despite this official account of her life, rumours persisted that the real Marie Thérèse was so traumatised by the Revolution that she secretly changed places with Ernestine Lambriquet, believed to be her half sister, and lived in hiding in Hildburghausen. In May last year, Germany state radio MDR set out to end speculation over the identity of the Dark Countess by comparing DNA tests of her remains with Marie Thérèse's official remains in the church of the Franciscan Monastery of Kostanjevica near Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Yesterday, the forensic team recovered parts of a skeleton in the German tomb. Michael Romhild, the director of the Hildburghausen museum, said that once analysed, "modern science will clear up the fate of the Dark Countess."