Le Roi Soleil

Le Roi Soleil is a successful French musical about the life of Louis XIV (played by Emmanuel Moire). It premiered on 22 September 2005 at the Palais des Sports in Paris.

The play begins with the Fronde against Cardinal Mazarin. Young Louis is the consecrated King at Reims. But his power has been confiscated by his mother, Anne of Austria, and the Cardinal, who doubt his ability to rule France alone.

Louis falls in love with Marie Mancini, an Italian emigrant without noble birth, niece of Cardinal Mazarin. To prove himself as a man, the young monarch decides to leave for the war at the head of his armies, and though Marie has a worrying premonition she is unable to stop him. Louis falls in battle, victim to a serious disease, and for a long time is believed dead. The court forgets him and attempts to name his brother Philippe the new King of France. Marie, however, refuses to accept the fatality and spends many nights by his bedside praying in tears.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Roi_Soleil_(musical)