Moments before his execution in 1793, Louis XVI asked whether there was any news of the explorer La Pérouse. This episode dismantles the caricature of the out-of-touch tyrant and reveals a shy, analytical king who loved maps, astronomy, and locksmithing but was utterly mismatched with the crisis that toppled the French monarchy.

We examine his grief-filled childhood, tutors who taught him to hide his emotions, his marriage to Marie Antoinette, his adopted children, the Edict of Versailles, costly loans to fund the American Revolution, Necker’s misleading accounts, the Estates General, the flight to Varennes, the iron chest, and the 361 to 360 vote that sent him to the guillotine.

• Why historians reject the phimosis surgery explanation for his unconsummated marriage
• How funding the American Revolution with loans crippled French finances
• The handwritten manifesto that destroyed public trust after Varennes
• How his own locksmith exposed the secret iron chest
• Whether history punishes indecision more harshly than cruelty