 Princess Marie Thérèse (the presumed identity of the Dark Countess) and the living reference, Alexander, Prince of Saxe-Gessaphe, a maternal descendant of Marie Antoinette’s sister, Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria were compared.Although separated by six generations, the maternal inheritance of mtDNA means that there is no recombination at each generation; hence it remains the same.If the Dark Countess was truly Marie Thérèse, the bone fragments would have had the same mtDNA profile as Alexander (whose maternal line crosses with Marie Antoinette’s mother, Maria Theresa of Hungary).