Guillotines and Shrugs: The Heirs Nobody Asked For

IP. Rangga

After the storm of the 1789 French Revolution, the streets of Paris had quieted, and the guillotine had claimed the heads of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. France had abolished the monarchy, but the royal bloodline wasn't entirely severed. Despite the chaos, royal relatives fled into exile, preserving their claim to the throne like a flame kept alive in secret chambers.

Two heirs to the defunct throne emerged from this turbulent history: Louis Alphonse de Bourbon and Jean d'Orléans. But the story of their family’s survival and split traces all the way back to Louis XIV, the Sun King, and his brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. These branches of the Bourbon family, the Bourbons and the Orléans, carried on even after the Revolution had stripped their crowns and castles.

Louis Alphonse de Bourbon, the Legitimist claimant, was the guy you’d expect to inherit the throne, if thrones still existed. He was the great-grandson of Spain’s Francisco Franco through marriage, and a direct descendant of Louis XIV. His followers still claim he’s the true King of France, even giving him the regal title Louis XX. Louis, however, doesn’t exactly spend his days in palaces; he works as a banker in Madrid. His claim is all about preserving tradition: according to him, only the senior Bourbon line has the right to rule.

Then there’s Jean d’Orléans, the Orléanist claimant. His great-great-grandfather, Louis-Philippe I, became king after the July Revolution of 1830, when France was fed up with the ultra-conservative rule of Charles X, the last Bourbon king. Charles tried to bring back nearly absolute monarchy, and nobody was having it. So, France turned to Louis-Philippe, a more liberal, constitutional monarch, the "King of the French," not "King of France" — a small but important distinction. Jean now lives in France, leading a quieter life of consulting and heritage preservation, representing a monarchy that was more about compromise than divine right.

Here’s where things get messy. While both Louis Alphonse and Jean d’Orléans can trace their ancestry back to the French monarchy, they represent very different visions of what that monarchy should be. The Legitimists want to restore the monarchy based on strict hereditary rules, whereas the Orléanists believe that constitutional monarchy was the answer to post-revolutionary France. But despite these differences, both men share the same bloodline and the same ancestors.

Fast forward to modern France, though, and you'll find that these dynastic squabbles are mostly a footnote. The truth is, France has moved on. The days of kings and queens ruling the country seem like distant history to the average French person, who has come to embrace the republican ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Why the disinterest? Well, after Louis-Philippe I’s liberal experiment, even his reign was toppled in 1848 by yet another revolution, giving rise to the Second Republic. By that point, the French had had enough of monarchies, whether absolute or constitutional. Add in the Napoleonic Empire, another stab at monarchy with Napoleon III, and by the time the Third Republic rolled around in the 1870s, France was done with kings.

The country’s political shifts had left people tired of royalty. France had been ruled by kings, emperors, and then by elected officials, and by the 20th century, the monarchy had lost its relevance. Sure, there are still monarchist movements, but they’re on the fringes. Today, republicanism—the idea that political power should be in the hands of elected representatives—runs deep in French society.

As for Louis Alphonse and Jean d’Orléans, they’re more symbols of a bygone era than real political players. People are more interested in their historical connections than in any real return to monarchy. In fact, ask the average French person who the legitimate heir to the throne is, and you’ll probably get a shrug. Some might not even know there are claimants still around.

In the end, while the bloodline may have survived the guillotine, the spirit of monarchy in France didn’t. France, in all its revolutionary and republican glory, simply doesn’t care who the legitimate heir is anymore. After all, they’ve been there, done that, and moved on.

(Photos: public domain).