Public Family Trees/Belgian Royal/Albert I of Belgium
1875 - 1934 · Male · Brussels, Belgium
Son of Philippe of Belgium and Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
3
Generation
4
Ancestors
25
Descendants
3
Children
1
Marriages
Albert I (1875-1934) was the third King of the Belgians, reigning from 1909 to 1934. The youngest son of Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, he became heir presumptive after his elder brother Baudouin's death in 1891 and succeeded his uncle Leopold II. He married Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria in 1900. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium in 1914 he rejected the ultimatum…
Born1875
Born to Philippe of Belgium, Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Belgian Royal family.
Next Generation
3 children recorded in this branch.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Belgian Royal family.
Died1934
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 2 · 1835 - 1909
Leopold II (1835-1909) was the second King of the Belgians, reigning from 1865 to 1909. The eldest surviving son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans, he married Archduchess Marie Henriette of Austria in 1853. At home his long reign brought rapid industrialisation, the expansion of Brussels, Ostend and Antwerp and a wave of monumental public building that earned him the nickname the Builder King. He is remembered above all for the Congo Free State, the vast central African territory he governed from 1885 as his personal possession, and for the regime of forced labour imposed there, whose brutality provoked an international campaign and led the Belgian parliament to take the colony out of his hands in 1908. His only son, Leopold, Duke of Brabant, died in childhood, so the crown passed to his nephew Albert I.
Gen 2 · 1840 - 1927
Princess Charlotte of Belgium (1840-1927), known in Mexico as Carlota, was the only daughter of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans and the sister of Leopold II. Born at Laeken, she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1857 and served with him in Milan while he was viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, before the couple accepted the Mexican throne offered by French-backed conservatives in 1864. As Empress of Mexico she took an active part in government and acted as regent during Maximilian's absences, but the empire collapsed once Napoleon III withdrew French troops. She travelled to Europe in 1866 to plead for support and never returned; after Maximilian's execution in 1867 she lived sixty years in seclusion in Belgium, latterly at Bouchout Castle in Meise, where she died in 1927.
Gen 3 · 1859 - 1869
Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant (1859-1869) was the only son of Leopold II and Marie Henriette of Austria, and from his birth the heir apparent to the Belgian throne. Born at Laeken, he was given the title Duke of Brabant traditionally carried by the heir to the Belgian crown, and his arrival was celebrated as securing the direct line of the young dynasty. He died in January 1869, a few months before his tenth birthday. Because Leopold II had no other son, the succession moved sideways to the King's younger brother, Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son Albert I, a shift that determined the descent of every Belgian monarch since 1909.
Gen 3 · 1864 - 1945
Princess Stephanie of Belgium (1864-1945) was the third child of Leopold II and Marie Henriette of Austria. Born at Laeken, she married Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in Vienna in 1881, becoming the prospective Habsburg empress, and the couple had one daughter, Elisabeth Marie. Widowed in 1889 when Rudolf died at Mayerling, she remained at the Austrian court until 1900, when she married the Hungarian nobleman Count Elemer Lonyay and in consequence lost her Habsburg rank and her father's favour. She spent the rest of her long life in Hungary, chiefly on her husband's estates, and published her memoirs in 1935. She died at the abbey of Pannonhalma in 1945.
Gen 3 · 1872 - 1955
Princess Clementine of Belgium (1872-1955) was the youngest child of Leopold II and Marie Henriette of Austria. Born at Laeken, she acted as her father's companion and informal hostess in his final years, and was for a long time refused permission to marry Prince Victor, Prince Napoleon, the Bonapartist claimant to the French throne, because of the diplomatic difficulty the match would cause. The wedding finally took place at Moncalieri in 1910, after Leopold II's death, and the couple settled in Brussels, where their two children, Marie-Clotilde and Louis Napoleon, were born. Widowed in 1926, she divided her later years between Belgium and the French Riviera and died at Nice in 1955.
Gen 6 · b. 1962
Princess Astrid of Belgium (born 1962) is the second child of King Albert II and Queen Paola and the sister of King Philippe. Born at Laeken and named for her grandmother Queen Astrid, she studied in Belgium and Switzerland and in 1984 married Archduke Lorenz of Austria-Este, who was created Prince of Belgium in 1995. The couple have five children: Amedeo, Maria Laura, Joachim, Luisa Maria and Laetitia Maria. She leads Belgian economic missions abroad on behalf of her brother, serves as president of the Belgian Red Cross, and has worked for many years on campaigns against anti-personnel landmines and in support of the Special Olympics. She stands in the line of succession to the Belgian throne after King Philippe's children.
Gen 6 · b. 1963
Prince Laurent of Belgium (born 1963) is the youngest child of King Albert II and Queen Paola and the brother of King Philippe. Born at Belvedere Castle in Laeken, he trained at the Royal Military Academy and served as a naval officer. His public interests have centred on the environment and above all on animal welfare: he founded and chairs a veterinary foundation that works on animal health in Belgium and in developing countries, and he has campaigned on renewable energy, sustainable building and nature conservation. In 2003 he married the British-born chartered surveyor Claire Coombs, and they have three children, Louise, Nicolas and Aymeric. He remains in the line of succession to the Belgian throne after his elder siblings and their children.
Gen 7 · b. 2001
Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) is the eldest child of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde and the heir apparent to the Belgian throne. Born in Brussels, she is the first woman to hold the title Duke of Brabant, traditionally borne by the Belgian heir, and under the equal-succession reform of 1991 she is set to become the country's first queen regnant. She was educated in Brussels and in Wales, completed the officer training year at the Royal Military Academy, read history and politics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and went on to postgraduate study in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She carries out a growing programme of official engagements in Belgium and abroad, and is the elder sister of Prince Gabriel, Prince Emmanuel and Princess Eleonore.
Gen 7 · b. 2003
Prince Gabriel of Belgium (born 2003) is the second child of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde and the younger brother of Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Born in Brussels, he was educated in Dutch-language schooling in Belgium and then at school in Britain, before completing the officer training year at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, following a family tradition of military education that runs back through his father and grandfather. He stands second in the line of succession to the Belgian throne, after his elder sister, and takes part in the royal family's public appearances, including the Te Deum and parade on the national day of 21 July and the annual Christmas concert at the royal palace.
Gen 1 · 1796 - 1817
Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1796-1817) was the only child of the future King George IV of the United Kingdom and Caroline of Brunswick, and for the whole of her short life the heir presumptive to the British throne. Immensely popular with the British public, who saw her as a corrective to her father's unpopularity, she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the future Leopold I of the Belgians, at Carlton House in May 1816, and the couple settled at Claremont in Surrey. She died in November 1817 at the age of twenty-one, shortly after the birth of a stillborn son. Her death left the British succession with no heir in her generation and ultimately opened the way for her cousin Queen Victoria, while her widower went on to found the Belgian royal house.
Gen 6 · b. 1960
Philippe (born 1960) has been King of the Belgians since 2013. The eldest son of Albert II and Paola Ruffo di Calabria, he was born at Belvedere Castle in Laeken, trained as a fighter pilot and paratrooper at the Royal Military Academy, and read political science at Trinity College, Oxford, and at Stanford University. As Duke of Brabant he led Belgian economic missions abroad for two decades and chaired the federal council for sustainable development. He married Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz in 1999, and they have four children: Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, Gabriel, Emmanuel and Eleonore. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 2013 after his father's abdication, and his reign has involved him in the formation of several difficult federal coalitions and in Belgium's public reckoning with its colonial record in Congo.
The House of Bourbon is a European royal dynasty, descended in the male line from the Capetian kings of France, that ruled France from 1589 to 1792 and again from 1814 to 1848, and that still reigns in Spain today under King Felipe VI. Over four centuries its members also held the thrones of Navarre, Naples and Sicily, Parma and Etruria, which makes it one of the most widely established royal houses in European history. ## Origins The family takes its name from the lordship of Bourbon in the Auvergne, centred on Bourbon-l'Archambault. Its royal line descends from Robert, Count of Clermont, a younger son of King Louis IX of France, whose marriage to Beatrice of Burgundy, heiress of Bourbon, carried the name into the Capetian house in 1272. For three centuries afterwards the Bourbons were powerful French princes of the blood rather than kings. That changed with Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, whose marriage to Jeanne d'Albret, queen regnant of Navarre, produced Henry of Navarre. When the Valois line died out in 1589, Henry was the senior Capetian heir, and he took the French throne as Henry IV. ## Notable members Henry IV ended the French Wars of Religion and issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598. His son Louis XIII, guided by Cardinal Richelieu, built the centralised state that Louis XIV, the Sun King, carried to its height across a reign of seventy-two years, the longest of any European sovereign, and to the palace of Versailles. Louis XV and then Louis XVI inherited that system, and Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were swept away by the French Revolution in 1792. The dynasty returned with Louis XVIII in 1814 and Charles X in 1824, and in 1830 the crown passed to Louis Philippe I of the cadet House of Orleans, the last king to rule in France. ## The Spanish branch In 1700 the childless Charles II of Spain left his crown to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. Philip became Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, at the cost of the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended with his renunciation of any claim to the French throne. His descendants include the reforming Charles III, Ferdinand VII, Isabella II, Alfonso XII and Alfonso XIII, who left Spain in 1931. The monarchy was restored in 1975 under Juan Carlos I, grandson of Alfonso XIII, who presided over Spain's transition to democracy and abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son Felipe VI. Felipe's elder daughter Leonor, Princess of Asturias, is heir to the throne. ## Significance No other family links the absolute monarchy of Versailles to a working constitutional monarchy in twenty-first century Madrid. Bourbon marriages tied the house to the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain, the dukes of Savoy, the Medici of Florence and the British royal family, so a Bourbon family tree doubles as a map of European dynastic politics from the Reformation to the present day. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | House of Bourbon (Maison de Bourbon, Casa de Borbon) | | Place of origin | Bourbon-l'Archambault, Auvergne, France | | Founder of the line | Robert, Count of Clermont (1256-1317), son of Louis IX | | First king of France | Henry IV, reigned 1589 to 1610 | | Last king to rule France | Louis Philippe I, reigned 1830 to 1848 | | First king of Spain | Philip V, reigned 1700 to 1746 | | Head of the house in Spain | King Felipe VI, since 2014 | | Heir in Spain | Leonor, Princess of Asturias | | Principal seats | Versailles, Fontainebleau, the Louvre, the Royal Palace of Madrid |
The Vanderbilts are an American family who rose from Dutch farming stock on Staten Island to hold the largest private fortune in the United States, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as the Commodore, out of nineteenth century shipping and railroads, and known today for the Gilded Age houses their descendants built and for figures from Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, to the journalist Anderson Cooper. ## Origins on Staten Island The family descends from Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, a Dutch settler who reached New Netherland in the seventeenth century and whose descendants farmed on Staten Island for generations. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was born there, the son of a boatman, and began work as a teenager carrying freight across New York Harbour in a single sailing barge. He married his first cousin Sophia Johnson in 1813. ## The railroad fortune Vanderbilt moved from sail to steam, dominated the Hudson River and coastal trade, and after the Civil War turned to railroads, consolidating the New York Central system and building Grand Central Depot. He left almost the whole fortune to one son, William Henry Vanderbilt, who nearly doubled it in eight years before dividing it evenly among his own eight children. They built the family's great houses: The Breakers and Marble House at Newport, Biltmore House in North Carolina, Hyde Park on the Hudson, Florham in New Jersey and Shelburne Farms in Vermont. ## Notable members The third and fourth generations produced Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the 9th Duke of Marlborough and became a social reformer in England; the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died in the sinking of the Lusitania; and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, who won the America's Cup three times and invented contract bridge. The modern line runs through Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt to the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. ## Significance No American family is more closely identified with the Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts set the pattern for how new industrial wealth was spent, and then for how quickly such a fortune disperses across many heirs. What endures is institutional: Vanderbilt University, the Whitney Museum, and the houses at Newport, Hyde Park, Shelburne and Asheville that are now museums and public estates. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), the Commodore | | Origin | Staten Island, New York, of Dutch descent | | Source of wealth | Steamboat shipping, then the New York Central railroads | | Famous houses | The Breakers, Marble House, Biltmore House, Hyde Park | | Best known members | Consuelo Vanderbilt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper | | Generations covered | Five, from the Commodore to Anderson Cooper |
The House of Hohenzollern is the German dynasty that ruled Brandenburg from 1415, held the Prussian crown from 1701, and gave Germany its three emperors between 1871 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918. This tree follows the senior Prussian line in one unbroken descent, from Frederick William the Great Elector, through the kings of Prussia and the German Emperors, down to Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the present head of the house. ## Origins The family takes its name from Hohenzollern Castle on a hill in the Swabian Alb, where a line of counts is recorded from the eleventh century. A Swabian Zollern married into the burgraviate of Nuremberg in 1192, and the Franconian branch that grew from it spent two centuries accumulating lands and credit with the Holy Roman Emperors. The decisive moment came in 1415, when Emperor Sigismund invested Frederick VI of Nuremberg as Elector of Brandenburg in return for his political and financial support. The Duchy of Prussia, a separate inheritance lying outside the Empire, passed to the Brandenburg electors in 1618, and Frederick William, the Great Elector, welded the two into a single functioning state after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. ## Notable members Frederick I turned the electorate into a kingdom in 1701. His son Frederick William I, the Soldier King, built the army and the treasury that his own son, **Frederick the Great**, used to seize Silesia and to make Prussia a European power, while also composing music, building Sanssouci and corresponding with Voltaire. **Queen Louise** became the emotional centre of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. **Wilhelm I**, with Otto von Bismarck as his minister president, was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. His son **Frederick III** and the liberal English princess he married, Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, reigned for only ninety nine days. **Wilhelm II**, the last Kaiser, abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941. ## Significance No other German family shaped the modern state so directly. Hohenzollern rulers created the Prussian civil service, compulsory schooling and the general staff, sponsored the Berlin academies and the Humboldt university model, and then used Prussian power to unify Germany around themselves. The monarchy ended with the revolution of November 1918, but the house continues as a private family: the headship passed from Wilhelm II to his eldest son, then to Louis Ferdinand, and in 1994 to Georg Friedrich, whose own father and uncles are part of the succession story told in this tree. ## Quick facts | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family name | Hohenzollern | | Place of origin | Hohenzollern Castle, Swabia, southern Germany | | Ruled | Brandenburg from 1415, Prussia from 1618, Germany from 1871 | | Royal title | King in Prussia from 1701, King of Prussia from 1772 | | Imperial title | German Emperor, 1871 to 1918 | | German Emperors | Wilhelm I, Frederick III, Wilhelm II | | Monarchy ended | 9 November 1918 | | Present head of the house | Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, since 1994 | | Principal residences | Berlin City Palace, Sanssouci and Cecilienhof at Potsdam, Charlottenburg | | Branch shown here | The senior Prussian line only, not Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen |
The House of Glücksburg is the reigning royal house of Denmark and Norway and the former royal house of Greece, a branch of the ancient House of Oldenburg whose modern members all descend from King Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Through the marriages of their six children, a minor ducal family from the Danish-German borderland became the common ancestor of monarchs in Copenhagen, Oslo and Athens, of a British queen consort, of a Russian empress, and of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. ## Origins The house takes its name from Glücksburg, a small castle town in Schleswig, and belongs to the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg line of the House of Oldenburg, which had held the Danish throne since 1448. Christian IX was a prince of that cadet branch with no expectation of ruling until the childless Frederik VII made the Danish succession an open European question. Christian succeeded him in 1863, and within months his second son was elected King of the Hellenes as George I, planting the family in Greece for 110 years. In 1905 his grandson Prince Carl of Denmark accepted the Norwegian throne as Haakon VII, giving Norway its own dynasty after centuries of union with Denmark and then Sweden. ## Notable members Christian IX was nicknamed the father-in-law of Europe: his daughter Alexandra married Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and his daughter Dagmar became Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, mother of Nicholas II. The Danish line runs through Christian X, Frederik IX and Queen Margrethe II, a trained archaeologist and illustrator who reigned from 1972 until her abdication in 2024, to her son King Frederik X and Queen Mary. The Norwegian line runs from Haakon VII and Queen Maud through Olav V, an Olympic sailing champion, to King Harald V and Crown Prince Haakon. The Greek line produced Constantine I, Paul, Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie, Queen Sofía of Spain, and Prince Andrew's son Philip, consort to Elizabeth II for 73 years. ## Significance No other western dynasty connects as many surviving monarchies in a single documented lineage. Two of Europe's ten reigning royal families, Denmark and Norway, are Glücksburg in the male line, and the house also sits in the ancestry of the British and Spanish royal families. Its history traces the transformation of European monarchy itself: from the dynastic matchmaking of the 1860s, through the loss of the Russian and Greek thrones, to the constitutional, publicly accountable monarchies of modern Scandinavia. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | House name | Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg | | Founding figure of the modern house | Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) | | Ancestral seat | Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig | | Thrones held | Denmark (1863 to present), Greece (1863 to 1973), Norway (1905 to present) | | Current heads of state | Frederik X of Denmark, Harald V of Norway | | Best-known member abroad | Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921 to 2021) | | Nickname of its founder | The father-in-law of Europe |
Albert I of Belgium's recorded parents are Philippe of Belgium, Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
Albert I of Belgium has 3 recorded children: Leopold III of Belgium, Charles of Belgium, Marie-Jose of Belgium.
Albert I of Belgium married Elisabeth of Bavaria.
Albert I of Belgium has 2 recorded siblings: Baudouin of Belgium, Henriette of Belgium.
Albert I of Belgium is recorded as King of the Belgians in the Belgian Royal family tree.
Albert I of Belgium's recorded native place is Brussels, Belgium.
4 ancestors and 25 descendants of Albert I of Belgium are recorded so far, within a tree of 48 people.
Albert I of Belgium is recorded as Leopold I of Belgium's Grandson.
Albert I of Belgium is recorded in the Belgian Royal family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 47 other people.
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