Louis XVI was a man who should never have become king. His grandfather was Louis XV, who ruled France from 1715 to 1774. Under normal circumstances the younger man would have remained a prince, but the untimely deaths of his father and two older brothers left the twenty-year-old in charge of a troubled nation. Economic problems had begun to beset France during Louis XV’s reign, setting the stage for the French Revolution, which started fifteen years into Louis XVI’s reign. On January 21, 1793, three and a half years after the storming of the Bastille (a prison and fortress in Paris), the king was beheaded. His death was the ultimate symbol of the revolutionary government’s decision to transform France from a monarchy to a republic. Understandably, it was also one of the most controversial events of the French...