ABSTRACT
Louis XIV was born at the royal palace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on Sunday 5 September 1638. He was the product of heredity and environment. He was supposedly the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, but his parents were spectacularly incompatible, experiencing a distant, dysfunctional relationship–hardly the basis for a stable home background. Louis XIII physical health had been wrecked by his doctors, his mental health by his father, the popular and charismatic Henri IV. Louis XIV's biographer, Anthony Levi thinks that Louis XIV resembled Mazarin rather than Louis XIII in looks and ability and that his future 'insecurity' was due to his awareness that he was illegitimate. French monarchy faced the greatest domestic challenge between the end of the religious wars in 1598 and the revolution of 1789. This upheaval was the Fronde. In the aftermath of the Fronde the boy king's government exploited its success. Louis XIV married Philip IV's daughter, Marie Therese.
