Orléanist in the context of "Legitimist"

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.

Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (/mɔːˈrɑːs/; French: [ʃaʁl moʁas]; 20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, politician, poet and critic. He was an organiser and principal philosopher of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, medievalist, conservative, corporatist, integralist, nationalist, traditionalist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras also held anti-capitalist, anti-communist, anti-liberal, anti-Masonic, anti-Nazi, anti-Protestant and antisemitic views. His ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and integral nationalism, and led to the political doctrine of Maurrassisme.

Raised Roman Catholic, Maurras went deaf and became an agnostic in his youth, but remained anti-secularist and politically supportive of the Catholic Church. An Orléanist, he began his career by writing literary criticism and became politically active as a leading anti-Dreyfusard. In 1926 Pope Pius XI issued a controversial papal condemnation of Action Française, which was swiftly repealed by Pope Pius XII in 1939. Maurras was elected to the Académie Française in 1938, and later expelled in 1945.

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.

The July Revolution (French: Révolution de Juillet), also known as the French Revolution of 1830, Second French Revolution, or les Trois Glorieuses ("the Three Glorious [Days]"), was a second French Revolution after the first of 1789–99. It led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans.

The 1830 Revolution marked a shift from that point on as the constitutional monarchy was restored with the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the replacement of the principle of hereditary right by that of popular sovereignty. Supporters of the Bourbons would be called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe were known as Orléanists. In addition, there continued to be Bonapartists supporting the return of Napoleon's heirs. After 18 precarious years on the throne, Louis-Philippe was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1848.

The Legitimists (French: Légitimistes) are royalists who adhere to the rights of dynastic succession to the French crown of the descendants of the eldest branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution. They reject the claim of the July Monarchy of 1830–1848 which placed Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, head of the Orléans cadet branch of the Bourbon dynasty, on the throne until he too was dethroned and driven with his family into exile.

Following the movement of Ultra-royalists during the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, Legitimists came to form one of France's three main right-wing factions, which were principally characterized by their counter-revolutionary views. According to historian René Rémond, the other two right-wing factions were the Orléanists and the Bonapartists.

The Republican Federation (French: Fédération républicaine, FR) was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the Progressive Republicans and the Orléanists rallied to the Republic.

Founded in November 1903, the party competed with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique (Democratic Alliance). Later, most deputies of the Fédération républicaine and of Action libérale (which included Catholics rallied to the Republic) joined the Entente républicaine démocratique right-wing parliamentary group.

Dona Francisca (2 August 1824 – 27 March 1898) was a princess of the Empire of Brazil (as daughter of Emperor Dom Pedro I, who also reigned as King Dom Pedro IV of Portugal, and his first wife Maria Leopoldina of Habsburg), who became Princess of Joinville upon marrying François d’Orléans, son of the French king Louis Philippe I. The couple had three children. Through their oldest daughter, Francisca and François are the ancestors of Jean, Count of Paris, the present Orléanist pretender to the French throne.

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.