Philip V of Spain

Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, was a French prince of the blood and the father of Henry IV, the first Bourbon king of France. Born at La Fère in Picardy in 1518, he was the senior male descendant of Robert, Count of Clermont, a younger son of Louis IX, which placed his branch of the Capetian house close to the French succession. His marriage in 1548 to Jeanne d'Albret, heiress and later queen regnant of Navarre, made him king consort of Navarre from 1555 and joined the Bourbon name to a sovereign crown. He moved between the Catholic and Protestant camps during the French Wars of Religion and served as lieutenant general of the kingdom in the year before his death in 1562.

Jeanne d'Albret was queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 until 1572 and the mother of Henry IV of France. The daughter of Henry II of Navarre and Marguerite of Angoulême, sister of Francis I of France, she inherited the small Pyrenean kingdom and ruled it in her own right. Her marriage to Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, brought the Bourbons a crown and produced Henry of Navarre, who would become the first Bourbon king of France. Jeanne converted to Calvinism in 1560 and became the most prominent Protestant ruler in France, establishing the reformed religion in Béarn and acting as a political leader of the Huguenot party. She died in Paris in 1572.

Henry IV was the first Bourbon king of France, reigning from 1589 to 1610, and is the figure from whom every later French and Spanish Bourbon descends. Born at Pau in 1553 to Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, he became King of Navarre in 1572 and leader of the Huguenot cause in the French Wars of Religion. When the Valois line ended with Henry III in 1589 he was the senior Capetian heir, but as a Protestant he had to fight for his kingdom and finally entered Paris after converting to Catholicism in 1593. His Edict of Nantes of 1598 granted French Protestants legal toleration and ended nearly forty years of civil war. With his second wife, Marie de' Medici, he fathered Louis XIII. He died in Paris in 1610.

Louis XIII was King of France and Navarre from 1610 to 1643, the eldest son of Henry IV and Marie de' Medici. He came to the throne as a boy of eight under his mother's regency and asserted his own authority in 1617. From 1624 he governed with Cardinal Richelieu as his chief minister, a partnership that broke the political and military independence of the Huguenots at the siege of La Rochelle, curbed the power of the great nobles, and brought France into the Thirty Years' War against the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria. His marriage to Anne of Austria produced two sons after more than twenty years without an heir: the future Louis XIV and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, founder of the Orléans branch.

Henrietta Maria was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife of Charles I, and the youngest daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici. Born in Paris in 1609, she married Charles in 1625, and her Catholicism made her a controversial figure at the English court and a target of Parliament's suspicion in the years before the English Civil War. She raised funds and support abroad for the royalist cause and spent the years of the war and the Commonwealth in France, returning to England after the Restoration of her son Charles II in 1660. Her sons Charles II and James II both became kings of England. The American colony of Maryland was named in her honour. She died near Paris in 1669.

Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, was the younger son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, the only brother of Louis XIV, and the founder of the Orléans branch of the Bourbons that eventually gave France its last king. Born in 1640, he was known at court simply as Monsieur. He was a capable soldier who commanded the French army to victory at the Battle of Cassel in 1677, after which Louis XIV gave him no further independent command. At his residences of Saint-Cloud and the Palais-Royal he was a lavish patron of art, theatre and gardens. His first wife was Henrietta of England; his second, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, was the mother of his successor Philippe II. He died at Saint-Cloud in 1701.

Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, governed France as regent from 1715 to 1723 during the minority of Louis XV, a period known ever since as the Régence. Born at Saint-Cloud in 1674, the son of Philippe I and Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, he was a nephew of Louis XIV and distinguished himself as a commander in Italy and Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession. As regent he set aside the late king's will, restored a measure of influence to the parlement and the nobility, reversed the alliance with Spain in favour of Britain, and supported the financial experiments of the Scottish banker John Law, whose paper money scheme collapsed spectacularly in 1720. He was a cultivated patron of painting and opera and died at Versailles in 1723.

Louis XV was King of France and Navarre from 1715 to 1774, succeeding his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five after the deaths of his father, mother and elder brother left him the only direct heir. The kingdom was governed during his minority by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as regent. His long personal reign saw France gain Lorraine and Corsica but lose most of its North American and Indian possessions in the Seven Years' War, and saw a prolonged constitutional quarrel with the parlements. His wife, Marie Leszczyńska, bore him ten children, including Louis, Dauphin of France, father of three future kings. His court patronised the art and architecture that gave the age its name. He died at Versailles in 1774.

Louis, Dauphin of France, was the only surviving son of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska and the father of three kings, yet he never reigned himself. Born at Versailles in 1729, his birth secured the direct succession and was greeted with public rejoicing. He was pious, studious and associated with the devout party at court, and he was largely kept away from government by his father. His first wife, Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, died young; his second marriage, to Maria Josepha of Saxony, produced Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X, who between them occupied the French throne for all but three of the years from 1774 to 1830. He died at Fontainebleau in 1765, nine years before his father.

Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Orléans, known from 1792 as Philippe Égalité, was the head of the Orléans branch of the Bourbons and the father of King Louis Philippe I. Born at Saint-Cloud in 1747, he served in the navy at the Battle of Ushant in 1778 and opened the gardens and arcades of his Palais-Royal to the Paris public, making them a centre of political discussion in the 1780s. A cousin of Louis XVI and a prominent freemason, he joined the third estate in 1789, was elected to the National Convention as a deputy for Paris, and adopted the surname Égalité when titles were abolished. His popularity with the revolutionary left did not survive the defection of General Dumouriez, and he died in Paris in November 1793.

Louis XVI was the last king of France of the old regime, reigning from 1774 until the monarchy was abolished in 1792. Born at Versailles in 1754, a grandson of Louis XV, he came to the throne at nineteen and married the Austrian archduchess Marie Antoinette. He supported the American colonies against Britain, backed attempts at fiscal and administrative reform, and abolished serfdom on the royal domain, but the crown's debts forced him to summon the Estates General in 1789, opening the French Revolution. He accepted the constitutional monarchy of 1791, was suspended after the storming of the Tuileries in August 1792, and was tried by the National Convention. He died in Paris in January 1793.