Orléanist

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. The term is currently used to refer to the House of Orléans claimants to the French throne and the royalists who support their claim; in opposition to the more conservative Legitimists, which support the claim by the eldest branch of the House of Bourbon – that is, the Spanish Bourbons, and Bonapartism, which support the claim by the House of Bonaparte as they were the last rulers of monarchical France.

Orléanists can be described in two groups: the pure Orléanists, which is constituted by those who primarily supported the constitution reign of King Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) after the July Revolution, and who showed liberal and moderate ideas, and the unionist Orléanists, which turned their support to the the then Head of the House of Orléans, Philippe, Count of Paris, as the natural heir of the childless legitimist pretender Henri, Count of Chambord, following his death in 1883.