From 8c3a479eeef7d19c976b5979ca25a1e3f2c70dbe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Swastik Tripathi <swastiktripathi.space@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2026 08:55:22 +0530
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Unescape backslash-escaped quotes in link and image
 titles

---
 lib/markdown2.py                             | 3 +++
 test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.html | 7 +++++++
 test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.text | 9 +++++++++
 3 files changed, 19 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.html
 create mode 100644 test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.text

diff --git a/lib/markdown2.py b/lib/markdown2.py
index d6285404..e2a61bce 100755
--- a/lib/markdown2.py
+++ b/lib/markdown2.py
@@ -3423,6 +3423,9 @@ def run(self, text: str):
                 if self.md.safe_mode:
                     # expose span contents for escaping - fix #691, #703
                     title = self.md._unhash_html_spans(title, spans=True, code=True)
+                # A backslash-escaped quote is just a quote. Left in, `\"` becomes `\&quot;`, which the
+                # escaped-ampersand handling then turns into a literal `&quot;` in the title.
+                title = title.replace('\\"', '"').replace("\\'", "'")
                 title = (
                     _xml_escape_attr(title)
                     .replace('*', self.md._escape_table['*'])
diff --git a/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.html b/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..bffa9c2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.html
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+<p><a href="http://example.com" title="Say &quot;hi&quot;">Inline</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="http://example.com" title="It's here">Single</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="http://example.com" title="Say &quot;hi&quot;">Reference</a></p>
+
+<p><img src="a.png" alt="Image" title="A &quot;quoted&quot; title" /></p>
diff --git a/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.text b/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.text
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..e82ecf88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/tm-cases/link_title_escaped_quotes.text
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+[Inline](http://example.com "Say \"hi\"")
+
+[Single](http://example.com 'It\'s here')
+
+[Reference][ref]
+
+![Image](a.png "A \"quoted\" title")
+
+[ref]: http://example.com "Say \"hi\""

From 94e11ecd5e9e67a7da442dcf7b60ba1193139732 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Swastik Tripathi <swastiktripathi.space@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2026 08:55:35 +0530
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Add changelog entry for #778

---
 CHANGES.md | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index 10aabd33..82c57fc1 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 
 ## python-markdown2 2.5.6 (not yet released)
 
+- [pull #778] Fix backslash-escaped quotes in link and image titles being rendered as a literal `&quot;`
 - [pull #762] Speed up documents with many links by skipping the backslash-escape scan for text without a backslash
 - [pull #748] Speed up `_unescape_special_chars` by skipping text with no hashes and dropping the full-text comparison per pass (#635)
 - [pull #749] URL-encode destinations generated by the `link-patterns` extra (#55)