Louis XV of France

About Louis XV of France

Louis XV, who reigned as King of France from 1715 to 1774, is ranked as the 258th most historically important figure by MIT's Pantheon project. His long tenure saw France involved in major conflicts like the War of the Polish Succession and the Seven Years' War, deeply influencing European politics and the nation's fiscal state leading up to the French Revolution. His reign marked the height of absolute monarchy in France, a critical period for understanding the roots of the subsequent revolutionary upheaval.

Despite this high historical ranking, Louis XV commands relatively little attention in the modern digital sphere, evidenced by his 100K annualized Wikipedia pageviews in 2025. This figure results in a significant negative Attention Gap of -5x, indicating he receives only one-fifth the expected internet traffic relative to his documented global cultural impact. To contextualize this underattention, he garners far less contemporary digital interest than contemporaries like Napoleon III (#421 importance, yet 1.6M views) or even Pol Pot (#710 importance, with 2.4M views).

Furthermore, the data suggests a pattern of fading relevance, as his 2025 annualized views show a year-over-year decline of -23.9%, coupled with a sharp -31% drop in momentum between the first and third quarters, signaling an active decline in current online engagement.