Sons (and daughters) and grandsons and great-grandsons of kings, sons and great-nephews of emperors, only three eventually ascended the throne of France. One was horrified to find himself there and lost it, one schemed to reclaim it, one lost it again. And only one of those abandoned the throne as a result of the most natural of causes: old age and illness and death.
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| The comte de Provence - later Louis XVIII - and his elder brother the duc de Berry - later Louis XVI - by François-Hubert Drouais, 1757. |
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| Louis-Joseph-Xavier de France, duc de Bourgogne, by Jean-Martial Frédou, circa 1760. The eldest grandson of Louis XV and heir apparent. |
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| The duc de Bourgogne, also by Jean-Martial Frédou, 1761. A much loved child, he died at the age of nine from the effects of a fall two years previously. |
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| Louis-Auguste de France, duc de Berry - later Louis XVI - by Jean-Martial Frédou, 1760. |
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| Louis-Stanislas-Xavier de France, comte de Provence - later Louis XVIII - by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1762. |
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| Charles-Philippe de France, comte d'Artois - later Charles X - with his sister Madame Clothilde, by François-Hubert Drouais, 1763. |
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| The comte d'Artois, by Jean-Martial Frédou, circa 1765-67. |
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| The comte d'Artois, also by Jean-Martial Frédou, 1773. |
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Louis-Antoine, duc d'Angoulême,by Joseph Boze, 1785. After his father Charles X's abdication in 1830 he became Louis XIX -
for about twenty minutes - before he signed his own abdication; many legitimists do not consider either of the acts as valid. |
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| Louis-Charles de France, duc de Normandie - later the titular Louis XVII - by Alexandre Kucharsky, 1792. |
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| Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, Madame Royale - later the duchesse d'Angoulême, later dauphine of France - by Heinrich Friedrich Füger, circa 1795. |
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| Napoléon-François-Charles-Joseph Bonaparte, roi de Rome - later Herzog von Reichstadt - by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1811. |
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Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieudonné, duc de Bordeaux, comte de Chambord - grandson of Charles X and later the legitimist pretender -
and his elder sister Louise-Marie-Thérèse - later Duchess of Parma and Piacenza - by Louis Hersent, 1821. |
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| Napoléon-Eugène-Louis-Jean-Joseph Bonaparte, prince impérial, by Franz Winterhalter, 1864. |
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| The Prince Impérial, by Jules Lefebvre, 1870. |
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