To be french,
France
The French Revolution created an emotional, imaginary, collective void: the king is no longer there! Then, french society tried to reinvest this void, to place other figures there: these are the Napoleonic and Gaullist moments, in particular. The rest of the time, French society is still looking for this figure.
Are the french,
more Royalists than Socialists?
I´m able to answer this question in my own way. I can deconstruct a french slightly, not quite intellectual and not quite in manners, but I can speak of them after years of association with them.
My first experience, besides Jacques Cousteu in TV when i was a child, it was working with them in Chile. We were young and beautifuls. We wanted to have fun. A friend of us, bought a restaurant with his partner, both french, both parisians.
The restaurant was a big red house on the border of a beach, 3 hours north from Santiago. They lived in the house and we were two waitress-friends for the weekend, so we have our own bedroom aswell. And communication with the french was theatrical. No words, because our words with their words didn´t sound the same. Nice but frustrating. That was when i decided to learn french.