Louis of France (1244–1260)
Eldest son of King Louis IX; heir and regent of France
Louis of France (21 or 24 February 1244 – 11 January 1260) was the eldest son of King Louis IX of France and his wife Margaret of Provence. As heir apparent to the throne, he served as regent for a brief period.
Regency
In 1248, King Louis and Queen Margaret traveled to Egypt to participate in the Seventh Crusade. During their absence, his grandmother, Blanche of Castile, acted as regent. However, when she died in 1252, his parents were still crusading and the eight-year-old Louis was appointed regent. He did not actually rule the country; real power was in the hands of a royal council, led by his uncles Alphonse and Charles. Nevertheless, royal deeds were sealed in his name, and correspondence to the government was addressed to him personally. The basis of the arrangement was the unwritten (at the time) principle of primogeniture in French law: in the absence of written instructions to the contrary, the king's eldest son automatically became regent during the king's absence. This regency ended when Louis IX returned to Paris in 1254.
Education and engagement
In subsequent years, Louis was educated for his future role as king.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Louis of France (1244–1260)” as eldest son of King Louis IX; heir and regent of France. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as eldest son of King Louis IX; heir and regent of France. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1875299. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1244, 1260, 1248 and 1252.
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This entry incorporates text from “Louis of France (1244–1260)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.