She gave birth to several children. The infant who died in 1812 — the child that the prince theory claims was Kaspar Hauser — was one of her early losses. She later had daughters who survived. Her position in the Baden court after Napoleon’s defeat, when her connection to the Bonapartes became a political liability, was complicated. She outlived her husband and lived until 1860, dying in Nice.
The question of whether she privately believed, or came to believe, that Kaspar Hauser was her son is one that cannot be answered with certainty. Some accounts claim she expressed strong interest in him and that intermediaries interpreted her reactions to information about Hauser as indicating private recognition. These accounts come through sources that cannot be independently verified and that were often produced by people committed to the prince theory. The House of Baden has never acknowledged any credible basis for the connection.
Stéphanie’s remains are in the Schlosskirche in Pforzheim. The House of Baden has consistently declined to authorize any examination of them. This refusal, while legally and dynastically understandable, has sustained the technical incompleteness of every previous genetic test of the theory — a gap the 2024 study addressed, as directly as the available materials allowed, by using the highest-quality comparative analysis possible from living descendants.
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## A Pattern in the Evidence: Fraud or Victim?
The debate over whether Kaspar Hauser was a genuine victim of childhood deprivation or a sophisticated fraud has run parallel to the prince theory debate for the entire history of the case. The two questions are related but distinct.