Louis was born to King Charles III and his second wife Eadgifu, in the heartlands of West Francia's Carolingian lands between Laon and Reims in 920 or 921.

During this time he enjoyed legendary stories about Edmund the Martyr (king of East Anglia), an ancestor of his maternal family who had heroically fought against the Vikings.

[5] Louis became the heir to the western branch of the Carolingian dynasty after the death of his captive father in 929, and in 936, at the age of 15, was recalled from Wessex by the powerful Hugh the Great, margrave of Neustria, to succeed the Robertian King Rudolph who had died.

In 939, the young monarch attempted to conquer Lotharingia; however, the expedition was a failure and his brother-in-law, King Otto I of East Francia counterattacked and besieged the city of Reims in 940.

Chronicler Richerus gives us an anecdote about this first encounter: Louis and his court then began the trip to Laon where the coronation ceremony was to take place.

Finally, the new King (perhaps like his ancestor Charles the Bald) used a blue silk coat called Orbis Terrarum with cosmic allusions (referring to the Vulgate) and the purple robe with precious stones and gold incrustations also used by Odo in 888) and his own son Lothair during his coronation in 954.

[16][17] Historians have wondered why the powerful Hugh the Great called the young Carolingian prince to throne instead of taking it himself, as his father had done fifteen years earlier.

First, he had many rivals, especially Hugh, Duke of Burgundy (King Rudolph's brother) and Herbert II, Count of Vermandois who probably would have challenged his election.

[18] In addition, the marriage with Eadhild, actively promoted by Eadgifu, was made in order to sever an eventual dangerous link between families of Hugh and Count Heribert II of Vermandois.

Hugh the Great, after negotiating with the most powerful nobles of the Kingdom – (William I Longsword of Normandy, Herbert II of Vermandois and Arnulf of Flanders) – was appointed guardian of the new king.

[20] Hugh the Great's power came from the extraordinary title of dux Francorum (duke of the Franks)[21] that Louis IV repeatedly confirmed in 936, 943 and 954; and his rule over the Marches of Neustria, where he reigned as princeps (territorial prince).

In a letter from 938 the pope called him duke of the Franks, three years later (941) he presided a meeting in Paris during which he raised personally, in the manner of a king, his viscounts to the rank of counts.

He also received the homage of other important nobles like Alan II, Duke of Brittany (who also spent part of his life in England) and Sunyer, Count of Barcelona.

[30] Hugh the Great's response to the King's alliances approximating Herbert II of Vermandois, a very present ruler in minor France:[31] it possessed a tower, called château Gaillot in the city of Laon.

In 939 Gilbert, Duke of Lotharingia rebelled against King Otto I of East Francia and offered the crown to Louis IV, who received homage of the Lotharingian aristocracy in Verdun on his way to Aachen.

Louis IV used this opportunity to strengthen his domain over Lotharingia by marrying Giselbert's widow, Gerberga of Saxony (end 939), without the consent of her brother King Otto I.

The wedding did not stop Otto I who, after alliance with Hugh the Great, Herbert II of Vermandois and William I Longsword, resumed his invasion of Lotharingia and advanced towards Reims.

[34] In 940 the East Frankish invaders finally conquered the city of Reims, where archbishop Artald was expelled and replaced by Hugh of Vermandois, younger son of Herbert II, who also seized the patrimony of Saint-Remi.

Louis IV took advantage of the internal disorder in the Duchy of Normandy and entered Rouen, where he received the homage from part of the Norman aristocracy and offered his protection to the young Richard I with the help of Hugh the Great.

[38] The regency of Normandy was entrusted to the faithful Herluin, Count of Montreuil (who was also a vassal of Hugh the Great), while Richard I was imprisoned first in Laon and then in Château de Coucy.

[44] Ultimately, probably by the pressure of the Frankish nobles and Kings Otto I and Edmund I of England, Hugh the Great decided to release Louis IV.

[50] In Synod of Ingelheim (June 948) participated the apostolic legate, thirty German and Burgundian bishops and finally Artald and his suffragants of Laon among the Frankish clerics.

[53] The King recovered, at the expense of Herbert II's vassals, the château of Corbeny which his father had given to Saint-Remi of Reims and also authorized archbishop Artald to mint coins in his city.

Louis IV, now allied with Arnulf I of Flanders and Adalbert I, Count of Vermandois, exercised real authority only north of the river Loire.

In 951 Louis IV fell seriously ill during a stay in Auvergne and decided to associate to the throne his eldest son and heir, the ten-year-old Lothair.

[57] Flodoard records in 951 that Queen Eadgifu (Ottogeba regina mater Ludowici regis), who since her return with her son to France retired to the Abbey of Notre Dame in Laon (abbatiam sanctæ Mariæ...Lauduni), where she became the Abbess, was abducted from there by Herbert III of Vermandois, Count of Château-Thierry (Heriberti...Adalberti fratris), who married her shortly after; the King, furious about this (rex Ludowicus iratus) confiscated the Abbey of Notre Dame from his mother and donated it to his wife Gerberga (Gerbergæ uxori suæ).

[58][59] In the early 950s, Queen Gerberga developed an increased eschatological fear, and began to consult Adso of Montier-en-Der; being highly educated, she commissioned to him the De ortu et tempore antichristi (The birth and era of the Antichrist).

Adso reassured the Queen that the arrival of the Antichrist would not take place before the end of the Kingdoms of France and Germany, the two Imperia fundamentals of the universe.

Flodoard recalled indeed that in 938 Louis IV had captured Corbeny in extreme brutality and without respecting the donations to the monks made by his father.

Written shortly after 956, perhaps by Adso of Montier-en-Der (according to Karl Ferdinand Werner) the Life of Clotilde[65] proposes to Queen Gerberga to build a church destined to be burial place of members of the Carolingian dynasty: the Abbey of Saint-Remi; moreover in a charter dated 955, King Lothair, following the desires of his mother, confirmed the immunity of Saint-Remi as the place of coronations and royal necropolis.