I'm going all-in for the Bourbons. Here's my answer from 2 and a half years ago, to which I will add a few new comments.
Bourbons. While Louis XIV was definitely an intolerant and absolutist King, he was really no worse than the Habsburgs. When the Bourbons first came to power, they were even Huguenots, though Henry IV quickly converted to Catholicism. But even after converting, Henry's Edict of Nantes granted limited toleration to French Protestants. Of course, this was eventually revoked by Louis XIV almost 100 years later.
The revocation of the Edict is often cited as evidence for Louis being the most intolerant and bigoted monarch of his time (never mind Leopold of Austria's frequent executions of Protestants and expulsions of Jews), when all it did was put his country's religious policy in line with that of other Catholic countries (like Leopold's Austria). To see just how much better France had been, admire the fact that the leading general of Louis' reign, Marshal Turenne, was a Huguenot (who eventually converted). Remember, you were not even
allowed to be Protestant in Habsburg Spain or Austria, much less serve in the army. Even in the usually more tolerant Protestant England, the idea of a Catholic general would have been utterly unthinkable.
The intolerance of the Austrian Habsburgs started one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history, the Thirty Years' War. And the cruelty of the Spanish Habsburgs is beyond measure. Countless numbers of "heretics" were burned alive in "auto da fes". By contrast, when the Spanish Bourbons came to power, they brought the Enlightenment to Spain, introduced the Bourbon Reforms, and eventually ended the Inquisition.
The Austrian Habsburgs also brutalized Hungarian and Transylvanian Protestants, forcibly reconverted Bohemia and Moravia, and under Joseph I exterminated the Romani people. Oh yeah, and they were still expelling Jews well into the 17th and 18th centuries (under the supposedly enlightened Maria Theresa), while the rest of Europe had gotten over that in the Middle Ages. Regarding Habsburg Spain, I somehow forgot to mention the greatest Spanish cruelty of them all: the barbaric conquest of the Americas and subsequent genocide of Native peoples. The French, of course, were well-known for being the friendliest European power to the Natives, and fought alongside them in the French and Indian Wars.
I find it interesting that British Whigs in 17th and 18th century England allied with the Habsburgs against the French. Many of them cited the intolerance of Louis, but the Habsburgs were just as bad if not worse on that front. Even more incongruous, the Dutch allied with the Habsburgs in this same period even though they had spent decades fighting for freedom against the Spanish Habsburgs. The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic employed by the English with the Habsburgs against the French reminds me of the US allying with Saudi Arabia against Iran. Although the Iranians are bad, the US has allied itself with a country that is at least as bad if not worse.
Since then I've expounded on this Middle East-early modern Europe analogy much further. In
this post I continued with the Franco-Iranian and Habsburg-Saudi analogy, and introduced Israel as the Dutch and Turkey as England. I also found an
interesting article (from 2019, so you can't say he came up with it first!) making the same analogy but 100 years earlier (17th century instead of 18th). I doubt anyone will care, but here is my full country-by-country comparison of Europe from 300 years ago to the Middle East today, based on the balance of power and alliance structures:
Iran: France
Turkey: Great Britain
Northern Cyprus: Ireland
Iraq: Spain
Syria: Sweden
Jordan: Denmark-Norway
Israel: Dutch Republic
Lebanon: Portugal
Egypt: Russia
Kuwait: Savoy
Bahrain: Lorraine
Qatar: Prussia (The "Little Sparta" UAE might be the better fit based on military power, but I chose Qatar for diplomatic reasons. Like Prussia, Qatar is the only GCC/HRE member openly defiant toward the Saudis/Habsburgs at this point in 1720. But who knows, if the UAE turns on their Saudi ally in the next few decades it might turn out that they were Prussia all along.)
United Arab Emirates: Saxony
Oman: Bavaria (This might be the most fitting pair in my mind aside from the initial Franco-Iranian/Habsburg-Saudi connection that started it all. Oman, like Bavaria, is on good terms with both France and Austria and has often served as mediator between the two states.)
Yemen (Houthis): Hungary (Kurucs)
Saudi Arabia: Habsburg Monarchy
Gulf Cooperation Council: Holy Roman Empire
You'll notice that Poland-Lithuania is missing, but that's because it was in personal union with Saxony at the time. Which brings up another reason why I prefer the Bourbons over the Habsburgs: the French consistently supported Polish independence and territorial integrity, while the Habsburgs were constantly undermining royal elections and conniving with Russia to weaken the Commonwealth - eventually culminating in the partitions of the late 18th century.
They were both absolute trash (proud Italian, normal)
I only vote Habsburgs because the Grand Dukes of Tuscany were Habsburg-Lorraine, and they did some good things.
What about the Spanish Bourbons in Southern Italy? Charles III of Spain did a lot of good in Naples and Sicily, countries that had previously been ignored and neglected under the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs.
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