5. Louis XIV was not very tall

Louis XIV was small in stature. And as evidenced in the pictures, she often wore tall wigs and high heels to increase her height. In fact, with the inches added, it is said that he appeared to be at least 7 feet tall.

4. Palace of Versailles

Louis XIV developed a distance from Paris after being expelled from his palace during La Fronde. And he would eventually turn his childhood playground, a royal hunting lodge outside Paris, into a luxurious monument of opulence. Not only the king and his court resided in this 700-room palace, but also the nobility and the thousands of employees it needed to maintain it. This structure helped to further establish the rule of the king, as it was the center of all political activity and a symbol of power.

3. Long reign

Like his great-grandson, Louis XIV was also very young when he became king after his father’s death. He would begin his rule at age 4 and continue for the next 72 years, making his reign the longest in the history of the French and European nation.

2. The nun of Moret

According to gossip nearly 350 years old, Queen Maria Teresa of Spain, wife of King Louis XIV, gave birth to a child fathered by an African lover, a dwarf servant named Nabo. This girl was supposed to be Louise Marie Therese, the Black Nun of Moret. The story was that at the time of her birth the public was told that the girl had died at birth. But in fact she was secretly taken to live with a wet nurse in the country for several years before entering a convent in Moret. The Black Nun of Moret is mentioned in the memoirs of several members of the French royal court, including King Louis’s mistress, Madame de Montespan, as well as his second wife, Madame de Maintenon. The writer and philosopher Voltaire was supposedly of the opinion that she was the king’s daughter, as he had had at least one African mistress. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage also wrote a play about Moret’s Black Nun called Les Meninas.

1. His successor was the second longest reigning king of France.

Plagued by family tragedy towards the end of his life, it seemed that Louis XIV would have no heir. His only son died of smallpox. The following year, his grandson, great-grandson, and granddaughter-in-law would die of measles. Although he had two grandsons left, one would die in a hunting accident and the other would be forced to resign from the French in order to remain ruler of Spain. As a result of this series of misfortunes, Louis XIV requested that one of his illegitimate sons be heir to his throne should the last remaining member of his bloodline die. However, this was not to be: his sickly great-grandson would live to become king at the tender age of 5 and rule for 59 years as Louis XV.

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