Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard (18 March 1920 – 3 February 2000) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 draughtsman

Technical drawing

Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....

, best known for being the principal perpetrator of the Priory of Sion

Priory of Sion

The Prieuré de Sion, translated from French as Priory of Sion, is a name given to multiple groups, both real and fictitious. The most notorious is a fringe fraternal organisation, founded and dissolved in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard...

 hoax, by which he claimed from the 1960s onwards that he was a Merovingian descendant of Dagobert II

Dagobert II

Dagobert II was the king of Austrasia , the son of Sigebert III and Chimnechild of Burgundy. The Feast Date of St Dagobert II is 23 December -Biography:...

 and the "Great Monarch

Great Catholic Monarch

The Great Catholic Monarch, also referred to as the Great Monarch, is a concept that has or had a certain place in unofficial Roman Catholic eschatology, mainly as a French monarchist variant of the medieval theme of the Last Roman Emperor...

" prophesied by Nostradamus

Nostradamus

Michel de Nostredame , usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties , the first edition of which appeared in 1555...

.
Pierre Plantard used an altered surname, Plantard de Saint-Clair, described as an epithet by Jean-Luc Chaumeil.