Louis was able to project an image of himself as the centre of gravity around which all of France revolved: it’s no accident that he became known as the Sun King. He centralized power to the ...

"King Louis XIV was the 'Sun King,' and so this would have been an emblem representing his power," Post says. "His colors were blue and gold, and so to have a blue diamond with a gold sun in the ...

The king himself was the ultimate arbiter of style. A theater buff, Louis took his self-selected sobriquet “the Sun King” from his youthful performances as Apollo in lavish court ballets ...

After Mazarin died in 1661, Louis declared that he would rule France without a chief minister, something no French king had done in living memory. Popularly known as the ‘Sun King’, Louis ...