The House of Bourbon-Orleans is the Royal House of France according to the true meaning and intent of the Fundamental Laws of the kingdom.
The Parlement of Paris, a judicial body of the Old Regime, ruled that foreigners are prohibited from the succession.
The same court likewise declared that the Salic law prohibits the kingdom from falling into “foreign hands.” Therefore, it is impossible for the same Salic law to call a foreigner to the throne.
King Henri IV was not a foreigner. The Bearnais were ruled to be French in 1505. The Parlement of Paris confirmed this again in 1579.
No King of France since the election of Hugh Capet can be said to be a foreigner, and certainly there were no foreign kings since the Hundred Years’ War. Therefore, all the kings of France since Hugh Capet have been Frenchmen.
Writers of the early 17th century justified the election of Hugh Capet on the idea that Charles de Lorraine had made himself a foreigner. This is ahistorical and revisionist history, but proves the idea that only a Frenchman could be King of France.
The Old Regime did NOT recognise being “French by blood.” There were cases of persons being “accidentally” born outside of France (but this was never granted past the second generation), but generally birth inside France or under French vassalage determined if someone was a natural Frenchman.
The Spanish Bourbons are foreigners and foreign princes. The Spanish Bourbons had lived abroad for four generations by 1883, when the elder French Bourbon, Henri V, Comte de Chambord, died. As we can see:
Carlos III. Born in Madrid, Spain. Died in Madrid, Spain.
Carlos IV. Born in Portici, Naples. Died in Rome, Papal States.
Infante Carlos (de jure Carlos V of Spain). Born in Aranjuez, Spain. Died in Trieste, Austria.
Juan, Count of Montizon (de jure Juan III of Spain). Born in Aranjuez, Spain. Died in Hove, England.
Succession to the throne is by natural right. It is the nature of the prince which calls him to the throne of France. The King must have the following nature:
- He must be a legitimate, hereditary descendant of Hugh Capet;
- He must be a male;
- He must be descended in the male line;
- He must be French;
- His line of descent must be French (one can’t pass on a claim one does not have);
- And he must be a Catholic.
Foreigners have already been excluded from the succession. Naturally, we could name the English Kings of the Hundred Years’ War, but more important is the case of Infanta Isabella of Spain. During the Wars of Religion, Isabella had much support by the Catholic League, but she was rejected. This was not because she was a woman (which made her invalid a priori) but because she was a foreigner.
The exclusion of foreigners from the throne is not new, and is even justified in the Bible:
When you have come into the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, and have occupied it and settled in it, should you then decide to have a king over you like all the surrounding nations, you shall set that man over you as your king whom the Lord, your God, chooses. He whom you set over you as king must be your kinsman; a foreigner, who is no kin of yours, you may not set over you.
[Deuteronomy 17]
The French Unionist Project 