The Girl Who Would Be King

The year is 1773, the future Duke of Orléans, cousin to the King of France faces a dilemma. His first child was stillborn and his wife, one of the richest heiresses in Europe is having a difficult pregnancy. Should she die without producing a male heir, her fabulous fortune will revert to her family, destroying the Duke of Orléans’ dynastic ambitions. 

While travelling through Italy, an unthinkable deception is conceived. The Duchess gives birth to a daughter, but the infant is secretly exchanged with the newborn son of a gaoler in the small town of Modigliana.

The boy is brought back to France to be raised as Louis Philippe, heir to the House of Orléans, while the true Princess grows up in relative poverty as Maria Stella Chiappini.

The children’s lives evolve in striking contrast. Louis Philippe is surrounded by unimaginable wealth at the Palais Royal, where his father embraces revolutionary ideals and becomes one of the most influential figures in France. As revolution engulfs the nation, Louis Philippe finds himself torn between loyalty to his family, affection for the royal household and sympathy for the ideals of liberty. Witnessing the horrors of the Terror first-hand, and the death of his aunt the Princesse de Lamballe, he is forced to question everything he has believed in.

Meanwhile Marial Stella endures a cruel childhood, despised by the woman she believes is her mother, who cannot forget the son she lost. Gifted with intelligence and determination Maria Stella forges her own path, only to be forced into marriage with the widowed English aristocrat Lord Newborough. But she still has no idea who she is and while entering a world of privilege in England she little suspects she is daughter of one of Europe’s most powerful families. Fate brings her into contact with the Duke of Orleans and while he realizes the girl before him is his daughter, she has no idea of the true bond between them. 

When her adoptive father lies dying, Lorenzo Chiappini confesses the secret he has carried for a lifetime. Maria Stella learns that she was exchanged at birth and begins an an extraordinary quest to uncover the truth of her identity. 

Three decades later the story reaches its climax. In the aftermath of Napoleon’s fall and the July Revolution, Louis Philippe is poised to become King of the French. At the very moment he stands ready to claim the throne, Maria Stella is about to publish her memoirs telling the world that he is not the Duke of Orléans by birth, but the gaoler’s son from Modigliana. She is the rightful child or the Orléans family. 

Inspired by an extraordinary true story that found its way into Caroline’s family through a painting given to an ancestor by Maria Stella, The Girl Who Would be King explores identity, inheritance, ambition and the devastating consequences of one desperate act. It asks whose life was more fulfilled, the Gailor’s son or Maria Stella’s.