Even though dying like an animal after such terrible abuse is dreadful to think of, living in exile, unknown and disinherited, is just as terrible to me. No matter how you look at it, the fate of Louis XVII is not a pretty picture.
Just as in the case of the "Dark Countess" some of the Dauphin claimants were obvious political plants to stir up trouble for the established regime. Claude Perrein, for one, the "Baron de Richemont" who with his brother Jean took turns impersonating Louis XVII, was a member of the Carbonari, an Italian Bonapartist movement. It was also thought that Louis XVIII was sending out boys as decoys from his place of exile, in case his nephew had survived, he did not want competition for the throne, and sought to make the mystery more murky by having a number of claimants turning up everywhere. Lazare Williams of New York, for one, had previous connections with the household of the former Comte de Provence.