Public Family Trees/Belgian Royal/Elisabeth of Bavaria
1876 - 1965 · Female · Possenhofen, Bavaria
3
Generation
0
Ancestors
25
Descendants
3
Children
1
Marriages
Elisabeth of Bavaria
1876 - 1965
Elisabeth of Bavaria (1876-1965) was Queen of the Belgians as the wife of Albert I. Born at Possenhofen, she was a daughter of Karl-Theodor, Duke in Bavaria, an ophthalmic surgeon in whose clinic she assisted as a young woman, and a niece of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. She married Albert in 1900 and became queen on his accession in 1909. During the First World War she stayed with the army behind the Yser and organi…
Born1876
The beginning of Elisabeth of Bavaria's recorded life.
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.
Died1965
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 1 · 1790 - 1865
Leopold I (1790-1865) was the first King of the Belgians, reigning from 1831 until his death. Born Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld at Coburg, he served as a cavalry officer in the Russian imperial army during the Napoleonic Wars and then settled in Britain, where in 1816 he married Princess Charlotte of Wales, heir to the British throne. Widowed the following year, he declined the newly created throne of Greece in 1830 before accepting the crown of recently independent Belgium, taking the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831. His second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, produced the dynasty that reigns in Belgium still. Uncle and trusted adviser to both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, he spent his reign consolidating a fragile new state wedged between France, Prussia and the Netherlands.
Gen 1 · 1812 - 1850
Louise-Marie of Orleans (1812-1850) was the first Queen of the Belgians, the second wife of Leopold I and the mother of the Belgian dynasty. Born in Palermo, she was the eldest daughter of Louis Philippe I, King of the French, and Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, and her marriage at Compiegne in August 1832 sealed the diplomatic understanding between France and the new Belgian kingdom. Devout, reserved and widely liked in her adopted country, where she was known as the Queen of the Poor, she devoted herself to charitable foundations and to the upbringing of her children: the future Leopold II, Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and Charlotte, the future Empress Carlota of Mexico. She died at Ostend in October 1850, aged thirty-eight.
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 · 1870 - 1948
Princess Henriette of Belgium (1870-1948) was a daughter of Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and the sister of King Albert I. Born in Brussels as one of twin girls, she married Prince Emmanuel of Orleans, Duke of Vendome, in 1896 and settled in France as Duchess of Vendome, dividing her time between Paris and the family's estates. She was known for her charitable work in nursing and in support of wounded soldiers, which expanded greatly during the First World War, when she helped organise hospital care for Belgian troops and refugees. Her four children carried the Orleans line forward, and she died in Switzerland in 1948.
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.
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 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 |
The House of Bernadotte is the royal family of Sweden, founded by the French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who was elected Swedish crown prince in 1810 and reigned from 1818 as King Charles XIV John, and it has held the throne in an unbroken line ever since, down to King Carl XVI Gustaf, Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Estelle. ## Origins The dynasty began far from Sweden, in the Gascon town of Pau, where Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in 1763 as the son of a provincial lawyer. He rose through the revolutionary French army to become a Marshal of the Empire and Prince of Pontecorvo. In 1810 the Swedish Riksdag, left without an heir after the deposition of Gustav IV Adolf and the accession of the childless Charles XIII, unexpectedly offered the succession to the French marshal. He accepted, converted to Lutheranism, took the name Charles John and in 1818 became king of both Sweden and Norway. His marriage to Desiree Clary, a Marseille merchant's daughter once engaged to Napoleon, produced the dynasty's second king, Oscar I. ## Notable members Oscar I's marriage to Josephine of Leuchtenberg, a granddaughter of the Empress Josephine, brought a descent from Sweden's older royal houses into the line, and Gustaf V's marriage to Victoria of Baden, a great granddaughter of the deposed Gustav IV Adolf, reinforced it. Later generations produced an unusual number of figures known for work outside the court: Prince Eugen, one of Sweden's foremost landscape painters; Gustaf VI Adolf, a working archaeologist and botanist; and Sigvard Bernadotte, an industrial designer. The family's daughters carried the name into the other Scandinavian monarchies and into Belgium: Ingrid became queen of Denmark, Astrid queen of the Belgians and Martha crown princess of Norway, which makes this tree a close relative of the Glucksburg line. ## Significance Under the Bernadottes the Swedish monarchy moved from real political power to a purely ceremonial role, settled by the constitution of 1974. In 1980 Sweden became the first monarchy to adopt full absolute primogeniture, making the infant Crown Princess Victoria heir ahead of her younger brother. Carl XVI Gustaf, who became heir at nine months old and king in 1973, is the longest reigning monarch in Swedish history. Several princes of the house lost their royal titles by marrying commoners and were created Counts of Wisborg by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, a kinsman through Queen Sophia of Nassau, which is why the Bernadotte name is borne today both by a reigning royal house and by a line of counts. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | House of Bernadotte | | Country | Sweden, and Norway until 1905 | | Founder | Charles XIV John, born Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1763 to 1844) | | Reigning since | 1818 | | Monarchs | Charles XIV John, Oscar I, Charles XV, Oscar II, Gustaf V, Gustaf VI Adolf, Carl XVI Gustaf | | Current head | King Carl XVI Gustaf, reigning since 1973 | | Heir apparent | Crown Princess Victoria, Duchess of Vastergotland | | Principal residences | Stockholm Palace, Drottningholm Palace, Haga Palace | | Royal motto | "For Sweden, with the times" (Carl XVI Gustaf) |
Elisabeth of Bavaria has 3 recorded children: Leopold III of Belgium, Charles of Belgium, Marie-Jose of Belgium.
Elisabeth of Bavaria married Albert I of Belgium.
Elisabeth of Bavaria is recorded as Queen consort of the Belgians in the Belgian Royal family tree.
Elisabeth of Bavaria's recorded native place is Possenhofen, Bavaria.
0 ancestors and 25 descendants of Elisabeth of Bavaria are recorded so far, within a tree of 48 people.
Elisabeth of Bavaria is recorded as Leopold I of Belgium's Granddaughter's wife.
Elisabeth of Bavaria is recorded in the Belgian Royal family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 47 other people.
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