It is said that a long-awaited son was given to King Louis XIII, in thanks for the king's consecration of France to the Virgin Mary. This son, who was to become Louis XIV, was born in 1638, the year of the kingdom's consecration.
Ever since, on every August 15th, Mary's main feast day (Assumption), a procession winds through the capital's streets as a reminder of this "vow of Louis XIII". However, the king also wished to see physical evidence of this vow in the fabric of Notre-Dame. He decided to refurbish the choir.
Dying five years after the birth of his son, Louis XIII didn't have time to complete his plans, work on which was only undertaken with any sense of purpose by Robert de Cotte at the end of Louis XIV's long reign, being completed in 1723, eight years after that king's death. Three quarters of a century to keep a royal vow!
The upper stalls were then topped by wooden sculptures which, in the main, represent the life of the Virgin Mary. The Catholic faith, in the Assumption, says that Mary, of all creatures the closest to the Lord Jesus, is now associated with His resurrection: the Saviour took her, "assumed" with Him in his glory.