Kind of an odd question, but is there a King of France anymore? Hear me out. . .
I know the French Revolution happened, and they lopped a few heads off here and there. Then they grew the short li’l guy, Napoleon, so he could take over Europe and avoid the guillotine due to his height. But did anyone keep track of the French bloodline after they knocked off Louis XIV? Who would be the current King of France?
What of other post-revolution nations? How about Russia? Do they know who would be the Tsar today given Alexander and his children were killed by the Bolsheviks?
We know that Spain has Juan Carlos, but what of other nations?
Tripler
And no, I’m not proposing we start reinstalling monarchs. I’m just curious.
A person who claims a throne of a country – whether or not that country has a throne to claim, is called a pretender. And, France has several pretenders. In fact, at one time, the Kings of England claimed to be the true King of France through William the Conqueror. Wikipedia, of course, lists several of them in their table of European pretenders. There was an book called The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck, and he goes through various pretender lines.
It all depends upon the various rules. For example, do you go with the Bourbon line or the Bonaparte line? If you go with the Bourbons, do you go with King Carlos of Spain or did he give up his claim to the French throne by taking the Throne of Spain. What about the Jacobists? Do you follow Salic Law (i.e. No Girls Allowed)?
Personally, I always wanted to tell people I’m a pretender to the Throne of France. I have no legitimate claim. I just pretend.
Well, Louis XIV was never “knocked off” - that was Louis XVI. As for the real question, the closest you’ll come is Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou. There is an absurdly byzantine history to it, though, which you can read if you are so inclined at the wikipedia article on legitimists.
Your history kinda sucks. Louis XVI was the King killed during the Revolution, and his line was restored to the throne after Napoleon was overthrown through his grandson Louis XVIII. The French monarchy came to an end in the mid-19th century, several kings and an emperor or two after Napoleon. And not only have folks kept track of the French monarchy post-monarchy, but there are fringe groups that want to restore it.
No, Who is not the King of France, Who is the last of the Time Lords?
Technically, what remains of monarchists – Frenchmen intent on restoring a (constitutional) monarchy – tend to back the Bourbon-Orleansist pretender whom Wooden Taco linked to. There was some serious movement towards the monarchy during the earlier part of World War II after the fall of the Third Republic. (Darlan’s assassin was a monarchist, FWIW.)
Wikipedia actually apparently has articles on heirs to a good chunk of the deposed monarchies in the world. here Sorta bizarre that families are still apparently feuding over thrones of countries like the Two Sicilies, which not only no longer have a monarch, but don’t even exist anymore.
Why not favor the Bonapartist claim? The House of Bonaparte ruled France (1870) more recently than the House of Bourbon (1848).
Of course then you’d have the problem of figuring out who the Bonaparte claimant is. When Louis Napoleon died in 1997, his will stated he was passing the succession on to his grandson, Jean-Christophe, rather than his son, Charles. Charles has disputed this by stating that his father did not have the right to remove him from the line of succession - he’s the next in line no matter what Dad said.
If you’re going to tell people that their history sucks, you need to make sure that your own will stand up to scrutiny. Louis XVIII was the brother of Louis XVI, not his grandson.
Actually, Louis XVIII was the brother of Louis XVI (he took the “XVIII” instead of the “XVII” to indicate his recognition of the late son of Louis XVI as the “real” Louis XVII–that is, the son of Louis XVI who would have ascended to the throne as Louis XVII, had it not been for those meddling revolutionaries abolishing the monarchy).
To complicate matters further, the Bourbon dynasty essentially ended with the July Revolution of 1830, when Charles X abdicated the throne in favor of his grandson, Henri the Count of Chambord. But Henri was never recognized as king, as the new government had offered the throne to the duc d’Orleans, Louis-Philippe.
The dukes of Orleans were cousins to the main Bourbon line–Louis-Philippe’s great-great-great-great grandfather (hope I got all the generations there) was King Louis XIII. But the Orleanist branch of the family had fallen out with the Bourbons during the Revolution, so not much love lost there.
Louis-Philippe reigned until the 1848 Revolution. After the 1848 Revolution, you had, in theory, at least three main pretenders to the throne–the descendants of Charles X (the “Legitimists”–the Bourbon dynasty), the descendants of Louis-Philippe (the "Orleanists), and the descendants of Napoleon (the “Bonapartists”–though their claim was to the imperial throne, not exactly considered the same as the royal throne of the Bourbons, but for simplicity’s sake we’ll throw them in together).
The Bonapartists would win a huge victory when Louis-Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected as president of the Second Republic in 1848–he would go on to overthrow the Republic and declare himself as emperor Napoleon III (as with Louis XVIII, the name was chosen to indicate his recognition of Napoleon I’s son, the “King of Rome,” as the legitimate successor to Napoleon I as emperor, had it not been for the meddling Bourbons getting restored after the Napoleonic wars). But after the Second Empire fell during the Franco-Prussian War, the Bonapartist pretenders joined the Legitimists and the Orleanists in the political wilderness, as France has never since been ruled by royalty or an imperial family.
The Kings of England claimed the throne of France through Edward III, who started the Hundred Years War, which was about his claiming to be the King of France. Edward III was the grandson of Phillip IV of France. The last British king to claim the throne of France was George III.
The English crown’s claim to France doesn’t go back to the Conqueror. It was first asserted by Edward III in 1340. He “claimed the throne of France after the death of his uncle Charles IV of France, thereby precipitating the Hundred Years’ War. At the time of Charles IV’s death in 1328, Edward was his nearest male relative through Edward’s mother Isabella of France.”
English monarchs continued to also style themselves King of France until George III dropped the claim and title in 1800.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem hasn’t existed in over 700 years, but according to one line of succession, should this terrible interregnum be put to an end, our presumptive King-to-Be is none other than the heir of the Guinness brewing company.
The pretender for the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran now lives in a Dallas suburb.
False pretenders* have about as likely a chance of getting the throne, but for a serious pretender, the story of Anna Anderson (of Anastasia fame) found an interesting end as a crazy cat lady in Virginia.
