They inhabit forest or woodland across sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia, Australasia, and a number of Pacific islands.

[2] Some of the one hundred or more species making up the family were previously assigned to other groups, largely on the basis of general morphology or behaviour.

The magpie-lark, for example, was assigned to the same family as the white-winged chough, since both build unusual nests from mud rather than vegetable matter.

[4] On that basis they were previously included as a subfamily of the Dicruridae, along with the fantails,[5] although it is now treated at familial rank as Monarchidae.

The narrower 'Core corvine' group now comprises the crows and ravens, shrikes, birds of paradise, fantails, monarchs, drongos, and mud nest builders.

In the western end of their range, they are distributed through sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, and the islands of the tropical Indian Ocean.

The family has managed to reach many Pacific islands, and several endemic genera occur across Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia as far as Hawaii and the Marquesas.

The paradise flycatchers of the genus Terpsiphone have the widest distribution of any of the monarchs, ranging across almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, the Mascarenes and Seychelles, southern and eastern Asia as far as Korea, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and the Lesser Sundas.

The monarchs are generally monogamous, with the pair bonds ranging from just a single season (as in the African paradise flycatcher) to life (the Elepaio).