The Forgotten Princess of Mont-Saint-Michel

In 1425, when tides around Mont-Saint-Michel made it unreachable, a young noblewoman named Alayne was locked in its tower for refusing an arranged marriage. Letters in the abbey’s archives reveal her descent into loneliness: she wrote to the sea, to gulls, even to the moon. Decades later, when monks reopened the sealed chamber, they found her journal filled with salt-stained pages—and a strand of hair braided into knots so tight it could have anchored ships. Local legend says that on nights of heavy fog, a pale figure appears in the tower window, combing her hair as the waves whisper her name.