Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
We thank the following experts for their comments:
Mathieu da Vinha
Directeur Centre de recherche du château de Versailles
Large parts of this script and the underlying research are based on the book King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV by Philip Mansel: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
1 The Theater of Absolute Power
It’s 1682 and the king finally moved into Versailles, his permanent home. More than twenty years in the making, this extension was among Louis’ first royal projects. It’s still unfinished but it already outshines every royal estate, past and future. Its grounds could fit more than 40,000 tennis courts.
#Château de Versailles. The reign of Louis XIV. Retrieved November 2025
https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history#the-reign-of-louisxiv1638-1715
#Château de Versailles. The estate. Retrieved November 2025
And it isn’t just a palace but a trap wrapped in gold. Beyond the royal family and servants, some 5,000 nobles from every corner of France live here. Far from home, they have no power and that only makes Louis stronger. In return, he gives them glittering titles, tax breaks and the illusion that they matter.
#Bohanan, D. (2001). Crown and nobility in early modern France.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321877590_Crown_and_Nobility_in_Early_Modern_France
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
Nearly one-fifth of the nation’s government spendings flows into Versailles to keep the king’s friends close and enemies closer.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
He starts the day with breakfast and a bowel movement. Doctors inspect the royal poop while he heads to mass.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
#Bernard, L. (1962). Medicine at the court of Louis XIV. Medical History, 6(3), 201-213.
#Château de Versailles. A day in the life of Louis XIV. Retrieved November 2025.
https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/day-life-louis-xiv#mornings
Drums and fifes mark his entrance as the choir starts to sing. The music changes daily, a personal playlist composed just for him. God may reside in heaven, but here, Louis is His lieutenant.
And duty calls. By eleven, he is back in his quarters, buried in letters, finance and strategy with his ministers. The kingdom flows through his hands.
#Château de Versailles. A day in the life of Louis XIV. Retrieved November 2025.
https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/day-life-louis-xiv#mornings
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
Just like Kangxi, the Quing emperor , Louis is obsessed with grandeur. Yesterday, a ship of Chinese porcelain arrived, so he sends back a French cannon. The afternoon continues with more diplomacy.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
A Siamese envoy that has travelled for two years, finally shows up. Their jaws drop as the king greets them draped in a coat completely encrusted in diamonds. He showers them with gifts worth around 2 million dollars today, a small price for the publicity this spectacle will bring.
#Riello, G. (2017). “With great pomp and magnificence”: Royal gifts and the embassies between Siam and France in the late seventeenth century. In Z. Biedermann, A. Gerritsen, & G. Riello (Eds.), Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (pp. 235-265). Cambridge University Press.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
All that work has Louis starving. His orchestra performs as hundreds of eyes track each bite of his royal mukbang. He couldn’t care less about cutlery and loves devouring food with his bare hands. And his appetite is perfectly matched by tonight’s obscene menu. Soups and pigeons in gold-crusted pies. Towers of chicken fricassées, partridges, tarts drenched in syrup. The smell of perfume, candle wax, butter and wine give the palace a heady aroma.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
#Grassi, M. C. (2020). Le souper à la cour de Versailles sous Louis XIV. In F. Le Borgne & A. Montandon (Eds.), Le souper (pp. 139-167). Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal. https://books.openedition.org/pubp/2468?lang=en
But the real intoxication is not food. It's extravaganza. Tonight, 24,000 candles set the gardens ablaze. Rockets trace the king’s initials in fire across the sky. Courtiers brag about partying through the night and sleeping through the day for weeks, lost in powdered wigs and champagne laughter. Louis’ ego thrives on this indulgent chaos.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
#Château de Versailles. (retrieved 2025.). Les fêtes des Plaisirs de l’Île Enchantée (7–13 mai 1664). Château de Versailles. https://www.chateauversailles.fr/decouvrir/histoire/grandes-dates/fetes-plaisirs-ile-enchantee
2 Beyond the Golden Walls
Beyond Versailles, Europe is a giant strategy game of paranoid kings. France, the most populous kingdom, is leveling up fast. This is freaking out Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and the Dutch, who all team up to stop Louis XIV from eating the map. His ambition is to expand his realm to the natural borders of France: the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
He commissions over a hundred star-shaped fortresses and strengthens the old ones, wrapping France in defenses with 400,000 soldiers and 13,000 cannons standing ready.
#Rowlands, G. (2010). ‘Absolute monarchy’, dynasticism and the standing army. In The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661–1701 (pp. 1–24). Cambridge University Press.
#Lynn, J. A. (1993). How war fed war: The tax of violence and contributions during the Grand Siècle. The Journal of Modern History, 65(2), 277–307.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/244639
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
#University of Michigan. (retrieved December 2025). Case 2: European Antecedents.The Geometry of War: Fortification Plans from 18th-Century America.
https://clements.umich.edu/exhibit/geometry-of-war/case-2/
#EBSCO. (retrieved December 2025). Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. In EBSCO Research Starters
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/sebastien-le-prestre-de-vauban
Louis delights in joining his army on the battlefield: during his 72-year reign he will engage in
five major wars, both on land and at sea.
#Lynn, J. (2015). The wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714. Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315845982/wars-louis-xiv-1667-1714-john-lynn
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
Genoa, one of the wealthiest ports in Italy, becomes the first European city to face the terror of his bomb ketches’ explosive shells. A ten day bombardment destroys half of the city. The message is clear: resist French annexation and fire will rain from the sky.
#Château de Versailles. (retrieved December 2025). Reception of the Doge of Genoa, 1685. In Key dates – History.
https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/reception-doge-genoa-1685
Each conflict reshapes the map of Europe absorbing Belgium, Lorraine, Alsace, Strasbourg into France.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
The price of glory is brutal. Even when the cannons fall silent, the army eats more than half the kingdom’s money.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
In wartime, the treasury bleeds dry and peasants are squeezed with taxes until their pockets are empty. The people grow angry, riots erupt and the King answers with military crackdowns.
#Félix, J. (2018). “The most difficult financial matter that has ever presented itself”: Paper money and the financing of warfare under Louis XIV. Financial History Review, 25(1), 43–70.
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/72452/2/The%20most%20difficult%20financial%20matter%20FH.pdf
#Root, H. L. (1992). Peasants and king in Burgundy: Agrarian foundations of French absolutism (California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy). University of California Press.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
To bolster his image, he funds newspapers that inflate his victories and downplay domestic problems.
#Klaits, J. (2015). Printed propaganda under Louis XIV: Absolute monarchy and public opinion. Princeton University Press.
He orders the construction of hospitals in Paris to care for wounded soldiers and the poor who crowd the streets. But the hospitals are filthy, designed less to heal than to confine. Instead of curing, 17th century medicine is mostly just lessons in bearing pain.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
3 The Body Becomes a Battleground
On the outside, he looks unstoppable, fighting, hunting, dancing, every day. It's glamorous and absolutely exhausting. But he knows that weakness is dangerous and the court can never see him crack. So he hides sleepless nights and smiles through fevers and joint pains.
As he nears fifty, his body slows and stiffens. Decades of gluttony and extravagance begin to take their toll: his frame grows rounder and he’s increasingly suffering from toothaches.
With no anesthesia and only the dentist holding his head still, the teeth are wrenched and pulled. One of the roots snaps and Louis can hear the bone crack as his mouth fills with blood. At night he tries to dull the pain with wine but as he chugs, it shoots up through his nostrils. The dental work has opened a tunnel from the King’s upper jaw to his nose. In a few days his mouth starts tasting of rot, his breath reeks and people flinch when he speaks. The doctors try to burn this hole shut, leaving Louis unable to eat for days. And this nightmare was just a dress rehearsal for the century’s most infamous surgery.
#Jones, C. (2008). The King’s two teeth. History Workshop Journal, 65, 79–95.
Months later, he develops a truly royal agony: a swollen lump near his anus. The doctors try piercing it, burning it, injecting mysterious potions. Nothing works and soon an open sore develops. The last option is surgery. The problem is that his chief surgeon has never performed anything like this before. Surgery, at this time, is just glorified butchery, amputations and haircuts both done by barbers. So the surgeon needs guinea pigs. He practices on condemned prisoners, perfecting both his courage and his cuts.
Finally, it's the Sun King’s turn: As the blade slices into the infected flesh, the King clasps the hand of his war minister and whispers “Mon Dieu” only twice. Three hours later, it's over. And though the operation was done in secret, a new fashion sweeps the court: Bandages wrapped around everyone’s buttocks. Louis smiles but he knows deep down: he survived not thanks to his doctors, but despite them.
#Fry, R. D. (2018). Reprint of: History of anal fistulas. Seminars in Colon and Rectal Surgery, 29(4), 151–153.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043148918300587?via%3Dihub
Tidsskriftet. (2016). Sun King’s anal fistula.
https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2016/08/medical-history/sun-kings-anal-fistula
#Turner, G. G. (1926). The relationship of proctology to greater medicine. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 19(Surg_Sect.).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003591572601902420
4 The Age of Gory
The 17th century is Europe’s medical twilight zone and probably the worst time to get sick. Doctors will blame everything on your blood. So for a thousand years, the go-to cure has been to cut a vein and let the sickness flow out. Bleed between the eyebrows for headaches, cut under the tongue for sore throat and if a woman’s periods are irregular, well, better get out the knife again.
By the mid-1600s, blood circulation is discovered and the invention of the microscope unveils a hidden universe of microorganisms, pulling medicine out of the dark ages. But this progress doesn’t help sick people much. Doctors still use ancient treatments that can kill you faster than smallpox.
Ironically, no one suffers more from outdated medicine than the most powerful man in the kingdom. By the turn of the century, the Sun King is in his early sixties, a miraculous age most people never make it to. He launches his longest and most expensive war for the Spanish throne but gout, arthritis and rheumatism keep him off the battlefield. Now, his main enemy is himself.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
The doctors do their usual bleedings and colonic cleanses but nothing helps. With all his teeth gone, royal feasts are just a memory. All he wants now is to ensure is his dynasty but a wave of measles tears through the royal family, killing his son, his grandson and almost every other heir to his throne.
They all receive the same treatment of bloodletting and laxatives. Still, death claims everyone around Louis. He is somehow spared – but not forever.
Note: It wasn’t only a measles wave. The royal family was hit by two epidemics in quick succession. In 1711, Louis XIV’s son, the Grand Dauphin, died of smallpox. Then in 1712, measles swept through the next generation, killing the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy and their son, the Duke of Brittany.
#Bernard, L. (1962). Medicine at the court of Louis XIV. Medical History, 6(3), 201–213.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1034724/
#Ingamells, J. (1983). Louis XIV and his heirs. The Burlington Magazine, 125(959)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/881171
#Château de Versailles. (2025). The Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), son of a king, father of a king, but never a king
5 The Final Performance
It begins with a chill running through his bones on a summer day when everyone else complains about the heat. With a sharp pain in his left leg, a black spot begins to bloom on the skin. It’s gangrene, his flesh starving for blood. The rot crawls upward, his flesh consuming itself and turning black. The sickly stench overpowers the incense in his bedroom. The blood the doctors draw is thick and dark. Even donkey milk, praised for its healing powers, doesn’t help. The nights drag on and nothing quenches his terrible thirst. He tries to keep working but his ministers can see death in his eyes.
#Mansel, P. (2020). King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo51153349.html
Note: There’s also a recent scientific re-examination of material from his preserved heart suggesting the fatal cascade may have started from a chronic fungal skin infection (chromoblastomycosis) that led to overwhelming infection (septicemia), rather than vascular gangrene alone. At the time we wrote and finalized the video, this study was still very new and had not yet been widely cited or discussed in the relevant literature. For that reason, we chose to align the video’s main narration with the established explanation (gangrene), and include the paper’s alternative interpretation here.
#Charlier, P., Pelzer, V., Augias, A., Slimani, L., Chaussain, C., Poupon, J., Popescu, S.-M., Kielbasa, M., Annane, D., & Armengaud, J. (2025). Paleoproteomics reveals chromoblastomycosis as possible cause of King of France Louis XIV’s death (1715). Annales Pharmaceutiques Françaises.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003450925001506
He faces it the way he faced everything else, as theater. He summons his five-year-old great-grandson, the future Louis XV and tells him: "Try to remain at peace with your neighbours. I loved war too much. Do not follow me in that." Over the next few days, he says farewells to ministers, courtiers and princes. “I am leaving but the State will always remain.” he says before he goes out like a candle.
Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne (retrieved December 2025). Dernières paroles du roi Louis XIV au Roi Louis XV, son arrière-petit-fils. (1715). Satires18-Prose: Poèmes satiriques du XVIIIe siècle.