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Home / People / Louis XV of France

Historical person

Louis XV of France

1710–1774

Louis XV became king of France as a child in 1715 and ruled personally from 1723 until 1774. His long reign included the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, colonial losses, repeated fiscal problems and conflict with the parlements.

Court favourites such as Madame de Pompadour became politically significant. Although once called “the Beloved,” Louis died deeply unpopular, leaving unresolved financial and administrative problems to his grandson. Louis XV of France was born in Palace of Versailles.

Hourly History’s Seven Years’ War explains the alliance reversal that joined Britain with Prussia and France with Austria and the wider competition for territory and commerce. In Baroness Orczy’s Mam’zelle Guillotine, France, 1757. Further fictional perspectives on Louis XV of France can be found in Jean Plaidy’s Louis the Well-Beloved, Jean Plaidy’s The Road to Compiègne, and Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber.

Periods

Periods linked to Louis XV of France

Seven Years’ War1756–1763 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Louis XV of France (3 series)

Outlander in Order

by Diana Gabaldon 9 books 4.6(525,677)

The Outlander series follows twentieth-century physician Claire Randall after she travels through time to eighteenth-century Scotland and forms a life with Highlander Jamie Fraser. The novels move through the Jacobite rising, its aftermath, the Caribbean, colonial North America and the American Revolution, combining family saga, historical adventure, romance…

All books in this series

The Scarlet Pimpernel in Order

by Baroness Orczy 16 books 4.4(1,936)

The Scarlet Pimpernel series follows Sir Percy Blakeney and his allies as they use disguises, forged papers and carefully staged deceptions to rescue people endangered by the French Revolution. Most volumes are set between the September Massacres of 1792 and the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, moving…

All books in this series

French Revolution in Order

by Jean Plaidy 3 books 4.3(544)

This trilogy traces the final decades of the Bourbon monarchy through Louis XV, Madame du Barry and Marie Antoinette. Courtly privilege, political misjudgement and popular resentment accumulate across the sequence until the splendour of Versailles gives way to revolution.

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Louis XV of France (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.