French Royal Women during the Restoration and July Monarchy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 1-18

3. The Return of the Bourbon Family (1814–1819)

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 19-49

4. The Last Bourbon Moment (1820–1830)

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 51-107

5. New Dynasty, Old History (1830–1839)

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 109-183

6. Dying Royal Power (1840–1848)

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 185-229

7. Conclusion

   • Heta Aali

   Pages 231-235

8. Back Matter

   Pages 237-261

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This book examines public discussions around France's four most prominent royal women during the first and second Restoration and July Monarchy: the duchesse d’Angoulême, the duchesse de Berry, Queen of the French Marie-Amélie, and Adélaïde d’Orléans. These were the most powerful women of the last decades of the French monarchy, but the new roles women were assigned in post-revolutionary France did not permit them to openly exercise political influence. This book explores continuities and variations in narratives of royal legitimacy, and how historians, authors, and politicians used national history - particularly medieval and early modern history - to either legitimize or undermine the French monarchy, and to define women's social and political roles. 

• the French monarchy
• French national history
• Bourgeois Queenship
• the Restoration period
• Marie Thérèse
• Marie-Caroline
• Marie Amélie
• Adélaïde of Orléans
• cultural memory
• ligitimacy
• nineteenth century France

“A large corpus of newspapers, magazines, biographies … constitutes the main set of primary sources on which Aali based her analysis. This choice certainly adds to the scholarly value of the book … . References to this very interesting set of primary records are supplemented by a long list of up-to-date secondary sources. The inclusion of an appendix with the family tree of the Bourbon and Orleans families is particularly useful for those unfamiliar with the genealogy of these Houses.” (Pablo Escalante, Royal Studies Journal, Vol. 9 (2), 2022)

• University of Turku, Turku, Finland

  Heta Aali

Heta Aali is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, and has published widely on French cultural history, nineteenth-century historiography, and medievalism.

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