Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'll tell you a bit about the Loyalists, but first, I must take issue with your characterization of much of the war in the body of your post, because much of this is exactly the kind of thing that the King and his supporters would have argued back then. Let me take it piece by piece.

The first thing you have to understand, though, was the legal structure at the time. These days, in the U.S., if a state or territory has a legal issue with the federal government, then the state or territory sues the U.S. government in federal court. If the lawsuit involves constitutional issues (that is, the U.S. Constitution which is the ultimate basis of U.S. law) then the lawsuit may reach all the way to the level of the Supreme Court. When they make a decision, legally speaking, it is the final ruling on the matter of law in regards to the constitutional issue at hand. Easy enough, right?

Well, back in colonial times, there was no U.S. Constitution. The ultimate authority in law for the Thirteen Colonies were their respective colonial charters, each of which was different. These were contracts between the people of the colony and the King, agreed to and signed by both sides, and these charters were what gave the colonies the legal authority to exist. They detailed what rights the colony had and what rights the King had and how the two sides interacted in a legal manner. These were not uniform, and some colonies enjoyed rights that others did not.

But there was no Supreme Court back then, either. The judicial structure was entirely different, and entirely separate. If you were a citizen of Massachusetts, including the governor and legislators of Massachusetts, you could only sue in Massachusetts court. They had no access to the British court system, so they couldn't bring a formal case there. The only judicial relief they could get when Parliament overstepped their authority in regards to the rights established in the colonial charters was to petition the King. Essentially, the Virginia government, or some other colony's government wrote a letter to the King: "Hey, the law Parliament passed is illegal. Here is the passage from the charter which shows why it is illegal. Here is precedent, etc. Now tell them to stop." And you'd hope the King would see your point.

So, the British point of view of the Revolutionary War was that the Thirteen Colonies were pissed off for paying too much in taxes and not being represented in government, and that's why they revolted. And the revolt was unjust because the taxes were fair and they were represented in government.

But the American point of view was that the rule of law was being violated. And it was being violated continuously, repeatedly, purposely, and egregiously. And when the colony's stream of judicial relief to these matters began to be violated as well, they revolted. They revolted so they could establish their own rule of law which would be respected.

So let's go back to the issues you brought up, and present them from the American side:

the granting of autonomy to the newly conquered Québec which allowed them to remain Francophone, use French civil law and practice their Catholic faith openly under the Protestant British administration.

OK, this has to do with the French and Indian War. Go back a little: both England/Britain and France claimed the "Ohio Country" which included the present states of Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. From the English side, this land belonged to the colony of Virginia, in accordance with Virginia's colonial charter. Pennsylvania's charter laid out its western border at roughly its current place, but Virginia's original western border was the Mississippi River.

Before the mid-1700s, it didn't really matter that Britain and France had overlapping land claims on the Ohio Country, since nobody had tried to settle it. But by the 1740s, there were enough people in America that interested Virginians formed a real estate company to go buy the land from the Indians and start selling it off to new settlers.

To prevent this, the French set up a series of military installations in the Ohio Country to protect their land claim. Virginia sent a regiment of the colonial militia under the command of George Washington, who was the younger brother of one of the investors in the land company. Washington had been appointed Captain of the militia by Virginia's lieutenant governor, who was yet another investor in the Ohio Company of Virginia. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the French in Ohio, Washington ambushed a contingent of French soldiers in the dead of night, which started the war. And this French and Indian War, in turn, was one of the causes of the much larger Seven Years War, which nearly bankrupted Britain.

Great Britain did win the French and Indian War against the French, so it wasn't entirely a disaster. To Virginia, that meant that they now should have control of the Ohio Country, in accordance with the land boundaries set up in their colonial charter. But the King and Parliament were pissed off about the whole thing so, while organizing Quebec under English rule, they formally made the Ohio Country part of Quebec.

This pissed off Virginia lawmakers greatly, because not only did it violate the law as it was written in the Virginia colonial charter, but it kind of defeated the whole purpose as to why the Americans had fought the French and Indian War in the first place. In any case, regardless of the King's personal feelings, Virginia's legal position was that the King didn't have the authority to unilaterally give Ohio to Quebec, since the contract both had signed back in the 1600s gave that land to Virginia. But what was their legal relief? The only thing they could do was peitition the King, who said no. There was no neutral third party they could appeal to.

Another is the so called "Intolerable Acts" which weren't particularly intolerable by any sort of standard, they were taxes levied on the colonies to cover the cost of their defense

Again, this came down to a dispute not over the amount of taxes levied, but over the rule of law. For 140 years, Massachusetts had local authority over all tax issues, and the law had been respected that way. This is how it had been done under the original Plymouth charter, and after a re-org in 1686 revoked that charter which ended in a rebellion in Boston with the colonial governor captured, a new Massachusetts charter was issued in 1691.

Under this new charter, Parliament and the King of England had the right to "impose and levy proportionable and reasonable assessments, rates, and taxes upon the estates and persons" of Massachusetts as long as these new laws were "issued and disposed of by warrant under the hand of the Governor of [Massachusetts] with the advice and consent of the Council [i.e., the Massachusetts colonial legislature] for our service in the necessary defence and support of our Government of [Massachusetts] and the protection and preservation of the inhabitants there".

In other words, the only way that Parliament and the King could raise taxes on the people of Massachusetts was to get authorization from the Massachusetts government.

This is how it had worked for 140 years, and this is what the law said, as the colonists understood it. And this is how Parliament had respected it for those 140 years as well. But now after the French and Indian War, Parliament began passing a series of laws that were essentially backdoor ways to tax the Thirteen Colonies, including Massachusetts. These schemes got more and more convoluted, including the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act among them.

Since Massachusetts couldn't sue, they did what they could do which was petition the King. Parliament would back off, then pass something else which again violated the charter of Massachusetts, and Massachusetts would again have to petition the King. This began to escalate to the point that Parliament began to specifically target Massachusetts, which is what some of the Intolerable Acts were.

The Boston Port Act punished Massachusetts specifically because of their reaction to the illegal Tea Act. But more egregious than that was the Massachusetts Government Act, which revoked the Massachusetts charter and brought the colony under the authority of the King.

This completely undermined the basis of the rule of law in the Thirteen Colonies. Up until then, the laws were based on the colonial charters, which were contracts between the people of the respective colonies and the King.

But with the Massachusetts Government Act, the King and Parliament were now taking the position that, "No, these are not contracts between two sides. The King and Parliament have unilateral control over them, and they only exist because we allow them to exist." In other words, they weren't contracts at all. They were meaningless. They were completely one-sided. The charters existed at the pleasure of the King, and the colony's basis in law could be revoked by him, unilaterally, at any time for any reason. In a word, this was tyranny.

The Massachusetts Government Act was a shot across the bow by Parliament, meant to be a warning to the other twelve colonies to not do what Massachusetts was doing, or you would be next.

Instead, the Thirteen Colonies banded together to fight this. The First Continental Congress petitioned the King for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts, making their case for why they were illegal in accordance with the colonial charters and English law. The King did not respond.

The Second Continental Congress then petitioned Parliament for their repeal, but Parliament responded that they did not recognize Congress. Send this petition thirteen times from your thirteen separate colonial governments, then we'll talk.

(...To be Cont'd...)

Others can probably address the loyalist perspective on the American Revolution better than I can, but I think you're mistaken about the United States being "intended to be an aristocratic slaver republic". Historians have debated this subject extensively and, while yes the revolution was more complicated than laudatory US Government propaganda tends to portray it as, I think it is a mistake to go all the way in the other direction. The historian Gordon Wood wrote an excellent book called The Radicalism of the American Revolution in which he looks closely at the intellectual and political roots of the American Revolution. I definitely recommend it as a good introduction to the philosophy which motivated American Revolutionaries. It also does point out some of the philosophy of the opposition to the Revolution, so you may find it useful to your original question as well.

u/lord_mayor_of_reddit's got that bit on lockdown, so I'll help with the other part of your question. "The loyalist side of the war" is a big open-ended question that I ain't got time for at the moment (can elaborate later though!) so I'll give ya an incomplete list of significant Loyalist units & military leaders. I can also get into the motivations/backgrounds/activities of the common Loyalist, though I'm really only qualified to comment on those in the Southern theater.

*The most famous Loyalist is, of course, Mr. Benedict Arnold. Reckon ya probably already know a bit bout him, so I'll move on.

*It is interesting to note that although Tarleton himself, and a number of his officers, were British, the vast majority of the British Legion were Loyalist, raised largely out of New York and Philly. New York was fertile ground for the raising of Loyalist troops, contributing more men to the Crown's cause than to the rebels.

*The Queen's Rangers. They were an extremely intriguing unit. Raised originally by Indian fighter Robert Rogers, they consisted of men from New York, Virginia, and Connecticut. They went through a period of turbulent leadership early in their existence (including being briefly commanded by noted fuckwad Major James Wemyss) before ultimately being assigned to (IMO) one of the Revolutionary War's more criminally underrated commanders, John Graves Simcoe. Simcoe started off the war as an ensign, fought his way up the ranks, and received the command of the Queen’s Rangers in 1777. The Rangers were a mix of infantry and cavalry, and proved to be one of the Crown’s most adept units in partisan warfare (especially in the Northern theater). Simcoe and the Rangers served with distinction for four years before surrendering with Cornwallis at Yorktown. Simcoe would go on to be a central figure in Canadian history.

*Colonel Tye. Tye was an escaped slave from New Jersey who initially enlisted in the Royal Ethiopian Regiment (a regiment formed out of ex-slaves freed by the royal governor of Virginia) before forming a small command of former slaves known as the “Black Brigade.” Tye was essentially a black, Tory, Jersey-dwelling version of the Swamp Fox, raiding, burning and generally being a thorn in the side of the Whigs for years. In my estimation, he was one of the Crown’s most effective partisan fighters. He was shot and killed on a raid in 1780.

*Thomas Brown. Brown was a Georgia planter who, after refusing to support revolution, was beaten, scalped, and had his feet held in a bonfire by the Sons of Liberty, thus earning the sobriquet “Burntfoot.” This was a rather large mistake, as Brown was not a man you wanted to piss off. Brown waged an effective campaign against the Whigs in Georgia and South Carolina for the rest of the war, despite the generally unfavorable odds. He had a nasty reputation, which was at least partially unearned, though his efforts to bring the Creek Indians into the war did not earn him any brownie points with the Whigs.

*And last but not least, Colonel David Fanning. Fanning was, in my estimation, the best commander of the bunch, but his most notable exploits came after Yorktown. That, along with him being a Tory, and a particularly scary one at that, has kept him largely out of the history books.

Fanning, an orphan, grew up in backwoods North Carolina as a ward of a farmer who forced him to live in the woods, taking care of free-range cattle. He contracted a scalp disease that left his head bald and scarred, and in later years always wore a black silk bandanna on his head. He played bit parts in the earlier part of the war in South Carolina, where his most interesting activities were escaping from the 96 (an important town and fort) jail on more than a dozen separate occasions.

Later in the war, Fanning commanded the Tory militia of Randolph and Chatham County (NC) , and the Highland Scots living largely in Lee and Moore County. He led an incredibly effective fight against overwhelming odds, winning almost all of the battles he commanded despite the Whigs' numerical and material superiority. At one point, he captured the entire Whig government of North Carolina.

On a personal level, Fanning was a terrifying figure. He hanged his enemies, burned their farms, and was generally determined to “scourge the country.” He was an excellent fighter and horseman, and personally fought and killed numerous people. At one point, while in Wilmington, a British officer arrested two of his men. Fanning went up to him and demanded their release, at which point the officer took a swipe at him with his sword. Fanning dodged the cut, disarmed the officer, and put his sword at the officer’s throat, holding him hostage till Fanning’s men were released. The (brief) uniform of Fanning’s men, a black and red fringed frock, became an instant death sentence to anyone caught wearing it.

After the war, North Carolina issued a pardon for all Loyalists who still wished to live in the state. David Fanning was specifically exempted.

In my opinion, had the Crown won the war, Fanning, Brown, Tye, and Simcoe would be regarded today much like we regard Francis Marion, the Gamecock, and Andrew Pickens.

First post here, any critiques are much appreciated! Glad to answer further questions also.

Let me add my Kudos What a fantastic thread Thank you