Françoise Marie de Bourbon was the youngest illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan. At the age of 14, she married her first cousin Philippe d'Orléans, the future regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. Through two of her eight children, she became the ancestress of several of Europe's Roman Catholic monarchs of the 19th and 20th centuries—notably those of Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and France.

The Régence was the period in French history between 1715 and 1723 when King Louis XV was considered a minor and the country was instead governed by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans as prince regent.