\textemdashThis presentation of recent work on the formation and the growth of the French Royal State in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries aims to draw out the diverse themes treated by historians and the many possibilities for future historical work. This diversity, which is particularly evident in French scholarship, offers divergent readings of the way institutions evolved, of state practices and the relationships between monarchy and society. This diverse historiography offers a fragmented vision of the Royal State. It has hindered fuller exchanges between French and anglophone scholarship, which has to an extent been dominated by the political history of the monarchy and its actors. By setting out a map of current work on this topic, showing both the most significant recent advances and the way interpretations are diverging, this article may help to open up historiographical debate over the early modern French state on an international plane.