Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Kingdom of France traces its origin to 843, when the Treaty of Verdun ceded West Francia to Charles the Bald from the Carolingian Empire. The monarchy was finally abolished on the 24th of February 1848, when the July Revolution led to the proclamation of the Second Republic, ending more than a thousand years of French royal rule.
Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was elected king in 987 after an intermittent power struggle ended the Carolingian line. The Capetian dynasty, including its cadet branches the houses of Valois and Bourbon, ruled France for more than eight hundred years.
The Edict of Nantes was issued by Henry IV in 1598 to end the French Wars of Religion, granting Huguenots freedom of private worship and civil equality. Louis XIV repealed the edict in 1685, causing an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 Protestants to flee France, including many artisans and intellectuals.
At its peak in 1680, the French colonial empire covered over 10 million square kilometres, making it the second-largest empire in the world at that time, behind only the Spanish Empire. The largest colony geographically was New France in North America, centred on the Great Lakes.
The absolute monarchy that had governed France for 948 years accepted a constitutional framework on the 3rd of September 1791, but that arrangement lasted less than a year. Financial crisis, food shortages after a harsh winter in 1788, and the ideas of the Enlightenment combined to fuel the French Revolution, which led to the abolition of the monarchy on the 21st of September 1792 and the execution of Louis XVI on the 21st of January 1793.
The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts was signed into law by Francis I in 1539. Articles 110 and 111 of the ordinance required the use of the French language in all legal acts, notarised contracts, and official legislation, marking a major step in the centralisation of the French state.