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Which historical figure springs to mind when you hear the words “the last king of the French”? We’re guessing it’s probably Louis XVI, the long-haired king who lost his head in the French Revolution. But what if we told you that the story of France’s kings didn’t end with the guillotine slicing through Louis’s neck in 1793? What if we told you that France didn’t say goodbye to its last king until over 50 years later?

Well, it’s time you met that king. Louis Philippe was a man whose life turned on revolution. Born into an aristocratic family, he survived the first French Revolution that killed his father, only to become king in yet another revolution that toppled his father’s cousin. As a figurehead of the July monarchy, he survived rebellions and Napoleonic coups before losing everything, as the streets of Paris rose up against him once more. A lifelong liberal who became a dictator king, an exile who grew up to rule the nation that exiled him—this is the complex, fascinating life story of Louis Philippe, the last king of the French.

In the early hours of October 6, 1789, fate handed the teenage Louis Philippe a front-row seat to history. The previous evening, a huge mob of women had gathered in Paris and set off for Versailles, the opulent palace of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. It was the early days of the French Revolution; not three months before, the Bastille had fallen. Now, here Louis Philippe was, leaning out of a window on a cool October night as the women of Paris forcibly dragged the king and his family back to the capital. Watching the procession of women passing below, Louis Philippe had good reason to be scared—he was the eldest son of the Duke de Léon, and the captured king was his first cousin once removed. But 16-year-old Louis Philippe wasn’t scared; he was already planning to ride this wave of revolution to greatness.

Born on October 6, 1773, Louis Philippe had what you might describe as an unusual upbringing. His father, the Duke de Talleyrand, was obsessed with social experimentation. While other royal children were learning the basics of ruling, Louis Philippe and his siblings were contemplating strenuous physical tasks while reciting Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This meant a childhood that left the boy in excellent physical and mental shape, and his father with a reputation as a very unconventional role model. This reputation turned out to be useful when the French Revolution hit. While other aristocrats fled into exile, the Duke was elected to the revolutionary National Assembly, changing his name to Philippe Égalité.

So when teenager Louis Philippe witnessed the 1789 women’s march from his window, he didn’t panic. Instead, he joined the Jacobin Club—the same Jacobin Club Robespierre came from—and enrolled in the French army as France went to war with Austria in 1792. Louis Philippe found himself soaring up the ranks, eventually becoming attached to the staff of General du Maurier. At this stage, it might have seemed like the revolution was a godsend for the Orleans family. In January of 1793, the Duke, or Philippe Égalité, voted alongside the National Assembly to execute his cousin, Louis XVI. But this was just the family’s high point; like a rollercoaster cart approaching the top of a peak, the only way for the Orleans clan now was down.

In April of 1793, Louis Philippe discovered that General du Maurier was plotting a coup. While he didn’t join the plot, he also didn’t report it, which became pretty awkward when the coup was uncovered. As General du Maurier and his fellow plotters fled to Austria, Louis Philippe was forced to flee alongside them. Suddenly, the Orleans name was synonymous with counter-revolution. Back in Paris, the Committee of Public Safety arrested the entire family. That November, Philippe Égalité was guillotined. Louis Philippe was hiding in Switzerland when he got the news that his father was dead and that he now was the Duke of Orleans. For the rest of his life, he would blame himself for his father’s death.

The next few years were a turbulent time in Europe. While Louis Philippe traveled incognito in France, the Thermidorian Reaction ended the Reign of Terror and sent Robespierre to the guillotine. In place of the revolutionary government, the Directory rose up. It was their agents who finally tracked Louis Philippe to Denmark in 1796. The Directory wasn’t as vicious as Robespierre’s goons, but they did not want an Orleans running around Europe, especially now that exiled royalists were plotting to put the new Duke on the French throne. So they decided to make Louis Philippe an offer he couldn’t refuse: get out of Europe, and we won’t guillotine the rest of your family. And that was how the future French king, Louis Philippe, wound up going to America.

Despite the Directory’s fears, Louis Philippe wasn’t much of a threat when royalists started plotting to overthrow the Directory and make him king. The new Duke was clear that he wanted nothing to do with this harebrained scheme. That may be why, in 1800, he was finally able to make peace with the Comte d’Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVI, who had fled into exile with his older brother, Louis XVIII, right after the Revolution exploded. The Comte was now living in England when Louis Philippe joined the royalists. After a couple of years in America, the Comte had every reason to hate the Orleans name—remember, Louis Philippe had voted for his brother’s execution. The Comte’s living brother, Louis XVIII, was even convinced that the entire Revolution had been an Orleans plot.

But this was 1800, and the Directory had now fallen. With the situation in France in flux, the Comte was determined that the royal family rebuild their bridges. So despite Louis XVIII being reluctant, the Comte invited Louis Philippe back into the fold. Not that this reconciliation had much real-world effect; by the time the family made up, Napoleon Bonaparte was firmly in control of France, and no one was clamoring for a royal return.

That was pretty much it for the next decade while Napoleon did his thing, conquering everything in sight. Maybe Louis Philippe potted around London, doing whatever it is that kings do in exile, before moving to Sicily to marry Marie Antoinette’s niece. His story could have ended there were it not for 1812. 1812 is the year that Napoleon made the classic dictator mistake of invading Russia. As his army and empire disintegrated around him, it began to look like Napoleon wouldn’t be needing France for very much longer. All of this raised a potent question: who would take the restored French throne?

As the Allies marched into Paris in April of 1814, it wasn’t clear who would get the restored French throne. While Louis XVIII was the obvious choice, there was a powerful Orleans movement in parts of French society that wanted the Duke to be king. It didn’t help that Louis Philippe kept quiet right until the last second when he finally declared for Louis XVIII—something the Duke was cajoled into, but more likely, the Allies had a quiet word with him, something like, “We do not need you screwing up post-Napoleon plans by starting a civil war.”

Anyway, Louis Philippe’s late support for Louis XVIII definitely was not wholehearted. During the Hundred Days, when Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France, Louis Philippe lurked around Paris, looking for all the world like someone waiting to snatch the throne when Napoleon inevitably fell again. After Waterloo, when Louis XVIII was restored for the second time, Louis Philippe began lavishing gifts and patronage upon liberals, looking for all the world like someone trying to fashion himself as an attractive alternative king.

But the clearest indication we have about the Duke’s ambitions came in September of 1820. Earlier that year, the Comte d’Artois’s surviving son had been assassinated. With his death, Louis Philippe had become third in line to the throne. But then it turned out that the dead man had impregnated his wife before dying. Seven months later, she gave birth to that child, and just like that, Louis Philippe was out of the running for king. The news of the miracle baby gave Louis Philippe a breakdown; he reportedly collapsed when the news reached him, wailing that the Orleans would now never amount to anything.

It was a touch melodramatic, and it was also untrue. Nobody at that time had any way of knowing it, but Louis Philippe was just one good revolution away from becoming king. On September 16, 1824, Louis XVIII passed away, and in his place, the Comte d’Artois assumed the French throne under the name Charles X. But this time, Louis Philippe had more or less given up on being king, becoming instead a big player in the business scene and the Friends of the bourgeois liberals in the government’s opposition. Thus, the Duke was perfectly placed to see just how quickly France soured on Charles X.

Back when Louis XVIII had descended in 1814, a bunch of people in France had basically been like, “Whoa, timeout! We don’t want another corrupt Louis ruling over us with absolute power; that is not cool!” So maybe Louis XVIII had signed something called the Charter of 1814—a semi-constitution. The basics said the king shall not act like a dictator. Although he had thought the Charter an outrage, he stood by it out of necessity, realizing that times had changed. But Charles didn’t get the message. Almost the first thing he did after being coronated was to figuratively bend over and use the Charter to wipe his bottom. Under Charles’s ministry, freedom of speech was axed, capital punishment for religious offenses was revived, and the franchise was restricted until not even the wealthy bourgeois could vote.

By 1830, Charles was so close to being a dictator that his advisors actually advised him to launch a royal coup. So he did. On Sunday, July 25, 1830, Charles published something known as the Four Ordinances. This outlawed his opposition and also freedom of the press. His government thought it was a masterstroke; the people of Paris thought differently. That Monday, the French capital trembled with unrest—there were protests, anti-monarchy chants, and the smashing of property. It might have died down of its own accord had Charles not sent in the army to shoot some of the protesters as an example. It was as effective a suicide as if Charles had tied a rock to his neck and dived headfirst into the Seine.

The next day, July 27, 1830, Paris went up in flames. Across the capital, rioters built barricades and armed themselves. When the soldiers came storming in, firefights erupted. There was carnage; it was blood in the streets. Outmaneuvered by the angry Parisians, the army simply had to abandon the city. As they left, the last thing Charles’s soldiers saw was the white flag of the monarchy being torn down and the revolutionary tricolor hoisted in the air. And with that, the July Revolution had begun.

So where, you might ask, was Louis Philippe? Well, not anywhere really. The future king was holed up at his estate, trying his absolute best not to look like someone waiting around to snatch the throne after Charles was deposed. It was his liberal opposition friends in Paris who were doing all of the work. As Paris fell to the rioters, the upper bourgeois businessmen and opposition leaders that Louis Philippe surrounded himself with got together and decided that they needed to do something. The July Revolution had caught them all by surprise; they were glad the street fighters of Paris seemed to want Charles gone, but were equally terrified the next logical step would be a Robespierre revival, complete with guillotines.

So they hatched a plan to make sure that this time, the Duke de Léon succeeded in his dreams of becoming king. With most of the newspapers on their side, they printed out posters declaring Paris was revolting and that the Duke de Léon was the last friend of the people. Then they dispatched an emissary to Louis Philippe’s estate, who told him to get to Paris and grab the opportunity that they had just handed him.

Louis Philippe arrived in Paris just before midnight on Friday, July 30, 1830. That same evening, Charles X fled his palace ahead of a lynch mob. Just like that, the king was gone, and the French throne was suddenly vacant. Now all Louis Philippe needed to do was convince the rioters to let him take it.

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Have you had one of those mornings where you wake up, remember what you did last night, and then just immediately curl up into a ball and start screaming? Well, I was Louis Philippe this morning on July 31, 1830, when he realized he had just toppled his cousin once removed and willingly rode into the middle of revolutionary Paris. Louis Philippe had a total meltdown; he actually begged all those liberals he had dragged in there not to make him king, which must have seemed both ironic and desperate. But there was no way he could back out now. The simple truth was that if someone didn’t take this revolutionary bull by the horns, the July Revolution wasn’t going to stop with Charles, and well, everyone present had all-too-real memories of the swish and thunk sound of the guillotine.

In the end, Louis Philippe agreed to clear up the mess. Draping himself in the tricolor, he rode out into the raging streets of Paris. Now, this was dangerous; no one in Paris had gone into this revolt because they desperately wanted to replace one doughy king with another royal figure. By riding out like that, Louis Philippe was putting himself at real risk of someone screaming, “That guy is a Duke! Cut off his head!” The reason that this didn’t happen is largely thanks to the Marquis de Lafayette, a legendary French hero who had played a significant role in both the American and original French Revolutions. The Marquis was respected by everyone, even Parisian street fighters. When he met Louis Philippe outside the Hôtel de Ville and enthusiastically embraced him, it sent a clear signal to Paris: the revolution was over.

Not that Charles X realized it, though. Still alive with his head attached to his body, the king was desperately scheming to get his family back onto the throne. The plan he hatched was almost ingenious: the people wanted a new king, so he would give them one—he would abdicate for his grandson, the miracle baby we mentioned earlier. It was a cunning move that could have saved the Bourbon line. Unfortunately for Charles, the idea came too late. As Charles was abdicating, Paris was watching Louis Philippe and the Marquis de Lafayette waving the tricolor from a balcony, signaling the dawn of a new era. Any thoughts the people of Paris had of allowing another Bourbon to take the throne died that very day.

On August 9, 1830, Louis Philippe was crowned. It was agreed beforehand that he would take the title of “King of the French,” implying a public servant who looked after his people rather than the traditional title of “King of France,” which implied a grumpy landlord angry with all of these peasants stinking up the place. It was the moment Louis Philippe had been waiting for his entire life. Forty-one years ago, the new king of the French had leaned out of a window and watched as the women marched King Louis XVI back from Versailles. Now here he was, wearing the crown his long-dead relative had lost to the guillotine. He wasn’t just the survivor of two French Revolutions; he was the beneficiary. As Charles X fled into exile, the establishment of Louis Philippe’s July monarchy looked a lot like a new chapter in French royal history—one that would establish a new and glorious dynasty.

In a way, this was right; it really was a new chapter for France’s monarchy. But it was also its last. The July monarchy was popular for maybe about 23 minutes before reality hit. The problem was that Louis Philippe had been put on the throne by a bunch of bourgeois liberals, but the people who had done all the fighting and dying during that July Revolution were workers, and they wanted progress to show for all that bloodshed. Louis Philippe failed to deliver on this spectacularly. Now sure, he wasn’t anywhere near as autocratic as Charles; more people could vote, freedom of the press was guaranteed, and the government had a healthy opposition. But if you were some unemployed street fighter, less autocratic than the last guy wasn’t exactly what you’d been fighting for in the first place.

In the first few years of his existence, the July monarchy had to face down all manner of threats. There was a Bonapartist plot to topple Louis Philippe and put one of Napoleon’s relatives on the throne. There was also a legitimate uprising to topple Louis Philippe and replace him with Charles’s grandson. There was also the infamous June Rebellion of 1832, the one Les Misérables is based upon. This prison uprising left 800 people dead. Ironically, though, all these attempted revolts actually showed Louis Philippe’s support. Faced with the prospect of a not-great monarch or the workers wheeling out the guillotine, the middle classes always chose the monarchy.

But there was one man who saw in the July monarchy not a bulwark against terror but a golden opportunity. Yep, it’s time