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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 appears in Alexandre Dumas’s Joseph Balsamo and related novels of the revolutionary cycle, as well as in Jean Plaidy’s The Road to Compiègne. Historical fiction often concentrates on mistresses, luxury and court intrigue, using Versailles as a symbol of decay before the Revolution. Such portrayals can understate the scale of global war and the persistent difficulty of reforming royal finance.

In Jean Plaidy’s Louis the Well-Beloved, France eagerly awaits the day the young King, Louis XV, comes of age and breaks free from the rule of his ministers. Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber places Louis XV of France within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and political ambition and government.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Louis XV of France

Seven Years’ War 1756–1763 CE

Series

Series featuring Louis XV of France (3 series)

The Scarlet Pimpernel in Order

by Baroness Orczy 16 books 4.4

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

Outlander in Order

by Diana Gabaldon 9 books 4.6

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