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At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the births of Sons of France and Infantes of Spain - which took place one after the other in an almost perfect dynastic parallel - were greeted by conventional encomiastic productions. The royal offspring - the younger ones as well as the crown prince himself - were compared to numerous ancient heroes and were the subject of glorious prognoses. Beyond the topics invoked by this circumstantial literature and behind the ancient metaphors, a mirror image of the younger prince emerges, which we propose to reconstruct. The aim is to highlight the status and functions attached to the kings’ second sons, in a comparative logic that enhances the points of institutional convergence and divergence in the French and Spanish monarchies. France celebrated its younger offspring, whereas Spain paid little attention to its own. This state of affairs, which can be observed in the encomiastic literature, explains why the terms applied to counterparts and contemporaries are so contrasting: the conspirator Gaston of Orléans contrasts with the faithful infants Charles and Ferdinand.