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Remember in the last article, we told you that Queen Elizabeth was the second longest reigning monarch in Europe, second only to King Louis XIV. The truth is she would have broken his record if she lived on for two more years, however she still lived longer than he did. While Louis ascended the throne at the age of 4, Elizabeth became Queen at 26. The focus for today is on Louis XIV popularly dubbed the Sun King, and we would be dropping some random facts about this powerful King. Let’s begin!

We already said he’s the longest reigning monarch in Europe – he ruled France from 1643 until his death in 1715 (that’s a total of 72 years and 110 days). After the death of his father (Louis XIII), Louis XIV became king at the tender age of 4 (his father was king at 9). It would have been custom for Louis XIV’s mother, Anne of Austria, to become Queen Regent of France until her son was of age. However, Louis XIII apparently lacked faith in his wife’s ability to rule. In his will, Louis XIII arranged for a regency council to rule on his son’s behalf, appointing Anne head of the council to ease her disappointment. Anne however orchestrated an annulment of the council and took over as Queen Regent with the support of her chief minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin of Italy.

The royal family was driven out of Paris twice because of Anne and Mazarin’s radical policies, giving Louis XIV a deep distrust of Paris and its people as he grew older that was why he built another one at Versailles. In 1682, Louis XIV officially moved his court to the lavish palace at Versailles, 13 miles outside of Paris. Europe’s grandest palace became a center of political power and a symbol of the king’s dominance and wealth.

Another fact most historians and political scientists are aware of is that Louis XIV believed he was a direct representative of God. His parents christened him Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “Louis, the gift of God.” If that wasn’t enough to go to his head, Jules Mazarin instilled in him the impression that Kings are divinely chosen. Hence, Louis XIV adopted the sun as his emblem, associating himself with the Greek and Roman sun god Apollo. He even played Apollo in a royal ballet. Like the planets revolve around the Sun, Louis XIV believed that France revolved around himself, he commonly uttered the phrase “c’etat est moi”(The state is me). He is known as a despot who held absolute powers as a monarch. He went far to commission scholars like Jean Bodin to convince the people of France why the Sun King should be Sovereign over the land. Of course Bodin’s work further gave an intellectual backing to Louis desire to centralise power in France (you could read more about Bodin in his book, Les Livres de la république).

Do you know that the princess Louis XIV married was his first cousin? The king’s first true love was Mazarin’s niece, Marie Mancini, but both his mother (the queen) and the cardinal frowned upon their relationship. Louis XIV was ultimately directed into a marriage that was a political, rather than a romantic, union by wedding the daughter of Spain’s King Philip IV, Marie-Thérèse, in 1660. The marriage between the two first cousins ensured ratification of the peace treaty that Mazarin had sought to establish with Hapsburg Spain. This may explain why the randy king has countless affairs producing various known kids from different women. In fact, one of Louis XIV’s mistresses bore more of his children than his wife.
Marie-Thérèse (his wife) gave birth to six of the king’s children, but only one, Louis, survived past the age of five. Louis XIV, however, had a healthy libido and fathered more than a dozen illegitimate children with a number of mistresses. Mistress Louise de La Vallière bore five of the king’s children, only two of which survived infancy, while her rival Madame de Montespan, who eventually became the king’s chief mistress, gave birth to seven of the monarch’s children. Louis XIV eventually legitimized most of his children born to mistresses in the years following their births.

In our next episode we would be giving you some more bizzare facts about the Sun King. Stay tuned and on the bright side of life.