Beginning with an analysis of the ceremonies held to celebrate Louis XIII’s capture of La Rochelle in 1628, this chapter explores how the psalms became central to the identity of the French monarch over the course of the sixteenth century. Originally ‘shared’ between Catholics and Huguenots, translations of the psalms into French began to adopt a more sharply divided confessional identity by the 1560s. At the same time, the concept of kingship, which had for some time been inspired by humanist writings, began to reflect Biblical models more closely. Jean Bodin’s seminal Six livres de la république of 1576, for example, was followed by numerous other treatises that framed the king as an agent of God in the temporal domain, especially after the assassinations of Henri III and Henri IV. By the time Louis XIII came to the throne, then, King David, author of the psalms, agent of the Holy Spirit, and known for his musical talents, had become the preferred model of kingship, a model that provided the context for numerous psalm translations, and for the identity of Louis XIII himself, now viewed as the perfect musician, warrior, and king.