Great Characters. Coming to the throne at a tender age, tutored by Cardinal Mazarin, the Sun King embodied the principles of absolutism. In he moved the royal Court to the Palace of Versailles, the defining symbol of his power and influence in Europe. Taking the throne at the age of four following the death of his father, King Louis XIII , the young monarch received a thorough education from his mother Anne of Austria and his godfather Cardinal Mazarin.
Originating as a dispute between the monarchy and the Parlement de Paris, the rebellion subsequently spread to the aristocracy. The child king felt humiliated by the arrogance of the great lords and physically threatened in the capital. He would never forget this experience. Their marriage sealed the reconciliation between France and neighbouring Spain.
The royal couple had six children. After the death of the queen in , the King secretly married Madame de Maintenon. Until the official inauguration of the Palace of Versailles on 6 May , the royal court often changed locations. With enough room to house the whole court, the Palace and its surrounding buildings rapidly became symbols of an age when the nobility were prepared to go to any lengths to be close to the King, who respected the royal tradition whereby the monarch had to be accessible to his courtiers.
Intimidating, majestic, kept informed by an army of spies, the king controlled everything. The King cultivated a broad variety of interests and excelled in numerous fields, such as music he played the guitar , dance performing in ballets , and horse-riding Louis XIV was an excellent rider.
He also loved hunting, promenades, fencing, shows and parlour games, and was a great fan of billiards. At the Palace of Versailles he staged the finest comedies, operas and tragedies and organised spectacular parties. At the start of his reign, before turning to more political allegories, Louis XIV chose the sun as his personal emblem. The sun is the symbol of Apollo, god of peace and the arts; it is also the star which gives life to all things, rising and setting with unfailing regularity.
Like the god, Louis XIV was a warrior fighting to restore peace; he was also a patron of the arts and the source of all privileges. Though the unstinting regularity of his life and with the public getting-up and going-to-bed ceremonies, he hammered home the symbolic parallels.
The Palace of Versailles is replete with representations and allegorical allusions to the sun god laurel wreathes, lyres, tripods combined with royal portraits and emblems. His idealized likeness appeared in fashion plates and his fashion choices were breathlessly reported in fashion magazines. With his distinctive mane of curls and signature high, red-heeled shoes, Louis combined the incontestable authority of an Anna Wintour with the charisma of a supermodel.
Lightweight silks were reserved for summer; velvet and satin for winter. Due to the changeable French climate, there had always been a certain seasonal rhythm to the textile trade, but now it became formalized and inescapable. Woe betide the woman who showed up at court in a summer gown on November 2.
Other countries took note of the happy economic results of this planned obsolescence and began to impose similar seasonal schedules on their own weavers. Fashions, too, changed seasonally in France. Whereas Spain had taken pride in the continuity of its fashions—a sartorial stability artificially enforced by sumptuary laws, which restricted certain garments and textiles to specific social classes—the French found this stagnation baffling.
Not only was the fashion industry enriched by the constant updating of wardrobes, but the French tended to get bored if a trend lasted too long. The lavish standard of living and the intricate program of etiquette the Sun King introduced continued to define the French monarchy right up until the French Revolution of In the highly regimented and specialized haute couture industry, artificial flowers, embroidery, tapestries, buttons, and even fans continue to be handmade using the traditional skills and techniques passed down from the 17th century.
Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. France was now the dominant power on the continent and other European nations felt threatened by this supremacy. The War of the League of Augsburg , followed by the War of the Spanish Succession severely strained French resources. In the War of the Spanish Succession, for the first time in nearly a century France consistently lost battles, most notably at Blenheim in and Ramillies in As his eldest son and grandson had died before him, his great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.
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