Legitimists in the context of "Duke of Berry"

Liberalism and radicalism have played a role in the political history of France. The main line of conflict in France in the long nineteenth century was between monarchists (mainly Legitimists and Orléanists but also Bonapartists) and republicans (Radical-Socialists, Opportunist Republicans, and later socialists). The Orléanists, who favoured constitutional monarchy and economic liberalism, were opposed to the Republican Radicals.

The Radical Party and especially the "republican" parties (Democratic Republican Alliance, Republican Federation, National Centre of Independents and Peasants, Independent Republicans, Republican Party, and Liberal Democracy) have since embraced liberalism, including its economic version, and have mostly joined either the Union for a Popular Movement in 2002, later renamed The Republicans in 2015, while a minority are affiliated with the Union of Democrats and Independents, launched in 2012. Emmanuel Macron, a former member of the Socialist Party, launched En Marche! (later re-named Renaissance) in 2016 and has served as President of France since 2017.

A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of government, but not necessarily a particular monarch. Most often, the term royalist is applied to a supporter of a current regime or one that has been recently overthrown to form a republic.

In the United Kingdom, the term is currently almost indistinguishable from "monarchist", as there are no significant rival claimants to the throne. Conversely, in 19th-century France, a royalist might be either a Legitimist, Bonapartist, or an Orléanist, all being monarchists.

Orléanist (French: Orléaniste) was a 19th-century French political label originally used by those who supported a constitutional monarchy expressed by the House of Orléans. Due to the radical political changes that occurred during that century in France, four different phases of Orléanism can be identified:

• The "pure" Orléanism: constituted by those who supported the constitutional reign of Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) after the 1830 July Revolution, and who showed liberal and moderate ideas.
• The "fusionist" (or "unionist") Orléanism: the movement formed by pure Orléanists and by those Legitimists who after the childless death of Henri, Count of Chambord in 1883 endorsed Philippe, Count of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe, as his successor. The fusion drove the Orleanist movement to more conservative stances, emphasising French nationality (rejecting claims to France of the Spanish Bourbons on account of their "foreignness") and Catholicism.
• The "progressive" Orléanism: the majority of "fusionists" who, after the decline of monarchist sentiment in the 1890s, joined into moderate republicans, who showed progressive and secular-minded goals, or into Catholic rally, like the Liberal Action.
• Contemporary Orléanism. The party Action Française embraced and still does advocate for its own variant of Orléanism which rejects the economic liberal policies of "pure" Orléanism and supports Integralism.

Orleanism was opposed by the two other monarchist trends: the more conservative Legitimism that was loyal to the eldest branch of the House of Bourbon after 1830, and the Bonapartism that supported Napoleon's legacy and heirs.

The Ultra-royalists (French: ultraroyalistes, collectively Ultras) were a French political faction from 1815 to 1830 under the Bourbon Restoration. An Ultra was usually a member of the nobility of high society who strongly supported Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, the Bourbon monarchy, traditional hierarchy between classes and census suffrage (privileged voting rights), while rejecting the political philosophy of popular will and the interests of the bourgeoisie along with their liberal and democratic tendencies.

The Legitimists, another of the main right-wing factions identified in René Rémond's Les Droites en France, were disparagingly classified with the Ultras after the 1830 July Revolution by the victors, the Orléanists, who deposed the Bourbon dynasty for the more liberal king Louis Philippe.

Marie-Thérèse (Marie-Thérèse Charlotte; 19 December 1778 – 19 October 1851) was the eldest child of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and their only child to reach adulthood. In 1799, she married her cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of Charles X of France, henceforth becoming the Duchess of Angoulême.

She became Dauphine of France upon the accession of her uncle and father-in-law, Charles X, to the French throne in 1824. On 2 August 1830, after the July Revolution, both Charles X and her husband signed an instrument of abdication 20 minutes apart. Some popular sources identify her to be a short-reigning Queen of France in the 20-minute interval between the signatures, but scholarly sources generally consider this to be a myth. She is, however, the undisputed legitimate Queen of France from 1836 to 1844 according to the Legitimists.