Louis XIV – The child king

How did the young Louis become the Sun King, the monarch under whom France’s grandeur shone so dazzlingly? 

The childhood of Louis XIV was both unhappy and romantic. Crushed by his teachers, watched over by Mazarin who initiated him into the art of intrigue and taught him how to be a king, whipped by his mother Anne of Austria, who let him get away with nothing, his upbringing was draconian.

Sovereign at five years old, he found himself thrown into one of the most turbulent periods in the history of France. Parliament pushes him around, princes challenge him and the people invade his palace. Louis is both a capricious, stubborn child and a young king who must suffer his elders’ contempt in silence.

Before the rising of the sun had been a “little man” and the humiliated Louis’ sole ambition became to exert his power.

A passionate writer of historical fiction, François-Guillaume Lorrain brings to life, before our eyes, the private childhood of one of the most fascinating figures of French history. This childhood and adolescence was one of the most epic, painful and fascinating of any French statesman.

Plunge into the harsh, extraordinary apprenticeship of solitude and power that was the childhood of Louis XIV

A child both full of life and gravely serious – and already a commanding presence. A likeable, somewhat lost child, weighed down by his onerous destiny.