Why was Louis XIV known as the Sun King?

tigasrule

Perhaps because he had once played the Sun (Apollo) in a ballet. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/ballet/ http://www.the-ballet.com/louisxiv.php May 15 12, 12:19 PM

sportsherald

There is an apparent association with the ballet role, but he made a conscious choice of the sun as his symbol. With literacy not all that common and heraldry in full flower, most royalty and nobles adopted personal badges and symbols in those days, and he chose the sun- 'Louis XIV chose the sun insignia as a personal symbol which decorated most of Versailles. Here is Louis XIV's own reason for his choice: "The symbol that I have adopted and that you see all around you represents the Sun which, according to the rules of this art [heraldry], is the noblest of all, and which, by the brightness that surrounds it, by the light it lends to the other stars that constitute, after a fashion, its court, by the universal good it does, endlessly promoting life, joy, growth, by its perpetual and regular movement, by its constant and invariable course, is assuredly the most dazzling and most beautiful image of the monarch."' -from http://splendors-versailles.org/TeachersGuide/SunKingEmblem/index.html See also http://www.louis-xiv.de/index.php?id=39 May 15 12, 6:12 PM