Louis XIV (baptised as Louis-Dieudonné) (September 5, 1638 - September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his first minister (premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. His reign thus spanned seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented of any European monarch to date.

Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand or Le Grand Monarque, the Great Monarch), because, following his victory in the Franco-Dutch War and the Treaty of Nijmegen, the Parlement de Paris decreed that all public inscriptions and statues of the king should carry that epithet attached to his name.

He is also popularly known as The Sun King (in French Le Roi Soleil) because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him. As a result, he was commonly associated with Apollo Helios, the Greco-Roman god of the Sun. As a patron of the arts, this association was fitting because Louis was, like Apollo Musagetes, the leader of the Muses.

During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars - the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession - and two minor conflicts - the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.

Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase L'état, c'est moi (I am the State) is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians. Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: Je m'en vais, mais l'état demeurera toujours. (I depart, but the State shall always remain).