Bourbon Family Tree - The House of Bourbon in France and Spain

Anne of Austria was Queen of France as the wife of Louis XIII and regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son Louis XIV. Born at Valladolid in 1601, the eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain, she was a Spanish Habsburg by birth and married Louis XIII in 1615 as part of a French alliance with Spain. Her position at court was difficult for two decades until the birth of the future Louis XIV in 1638, followed by Philippe, Duke of Orléans, in 1640. As regent from 1643 she governed with Cardinal Mazarin and held the crown's authority together through the civil wars of the Fronde, handing her son an intact and strengthened monarchy when he took personal power in 1661.

Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, was a French prince of the blood and the father of Henry IV, the first Bourbon king of France. Born at La Fère in Picardy in 1518, he was the senior male descendant of Robert, Count of Clermont, a younger son of Louis IX, which placed his branch of the Capetian house close to the French succession. His marriage in 1548 to Jeanne d'Albret, heiress and later queen regnant of Navarre, made him king consort of Navarre from 1555 and joined the Bourbon name to a sovereign crown. He moved between the Catholic and Protestant camps during the French Wars of Religion and served as lieutenant general of the kingdom in the year before his death in 1562.

Elisabeth Farnese was Queen of Spain as the second wife of Philip V and one of the most politically forceful consorts of her century. Born in Parma in 1692, heiress to the Farnese duchies of Parma and Piacenza, she married the widowed Philip V in 1714 and quickly dominated the Spanish court. Knowing that her stepsons stood ahead of her own children in the Spanish succession, she directed Spanish foreign policy for decades towards securing Italian thrones for her sons, an effort that placed Charles on the throne of Naples and Sicily and Philip in Parma. Charles later became Charles III of Spain. She acted as regent in 1759 during the interval between the death of Ferdinand VI and Charles's arrival from Naples, and died at Aranjuez in 1766.

Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, known to her family as Liselotte, was Duchess of Orléans as the second wife of Philippe I, brother of Louis XIV. Born at Heidelberg in 1652, a daughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, she married into the French court in 1671. Blunt, unpretentious and homesick for Germany, she wrote thousands of letters to her relatives abroad, and those letters survive as one of the frankest and most valuable eyewitness accounts of life at Versailles under Louis XIV. Her Palatine inheritance was used by Louis XIV as a pretext for the devastating war in the Rhineland from 1688, to her distress. She was the mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, regent of France, and died at Saint-Cloud in 1722.

Henry IV was the first Bourbon king of France, reigning from 1589 to 1610, and is the figure from whom every later French and Spanish Bourbon descends. Born at Pau in 1553 to Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, he became King of Navarre in 1572 and leader of the Huguenot cause in the French Wars of Religion. When the Valois line ended with Henry III in 1589 he was the senior Capetian heir, but as a Protestant he had to fight for his kingdom and finally entered Paris after converting to Catholicism in 1593. His Edict of Nantes of 1598 granted French Protestants legal toleration and ended nearly forty years of civil war. With his second wife, Marie de' Medici, he fathered Louis XIII. He died in Paris in 1610.

Jeanne d'Albret was queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 until 1572 and the mother of Henry IV of France. The daughter of Henry II of Navarre and Marguerite of Angoulême, sister of Francis I of France, she inherited the small Pyrenean kingdom and ruled it in her own right. Her marriage to Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, brought the Bourbons a crown and produced Henry of Navarre, who would become the first Bourbon king of France. Jeanne converted to Calvinism in 1560 and became the most prominent Protestant ruler in France, establishing the reformed religion in Béarn and acting as a political leader of the Huguenot party. She died in Paris in 1572.

Queen Letizia of Spain is the wife of Felipe VI and has been queen consort since 2014. Born in Oviedo in 1972 into a family of journalists, she studied journalism at the Complutense University of Madrid, took a master's degree in audiovisual journalism, and worked for the newspaper ABC, the agency EFE, Bloomberg and CNN+ before becoming one of the best known news presenters on Spanish television with TVE, where she anchored the main evening bulletin and reported from Iraq and from the United States. Her engagement to the then Prince of Asturias was announced in 2003 and they married in Madrid in 2004. As queen she concentrates her public work on health, nutrition, education, culture and support for rare disease research.

Maria Amalia of Saxony was Queen of Naples and Sicily and then, briefly, Queen of Spain as the wife of Charles III. Born in Dresden in 1724, a daughter of Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, she married Charles in 1738 when he was king in Naples. She took an active part in his government there and in his building projects, above all the palace of Caserta and the royal porcelain manufactory at Capodimonte, which she promoted. She bore thirteen children, among them the future Charles IV of Spain and Ferdinand, who became king of Naples. She followed her husband to Madrid when he inherited the Spanish crown in 1759 and died there the following year.

Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria was Dauphine of France as the wife of Louis, the Grand Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XIV. Born in Munich in 1660, she was a daughter of Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, and was chosen in 1680 for a marriage that tied France to a useful German ally. Highly educated and widely read, she found the etiquette of Versailles wearing and lived increasingly in retirement, though Louis XIV valued her company. She was the mother of three sons: Louis, Duke of Burgundy, grandfather of Louis XV; Philip, Duke of Anjou, who became Philip V of Spain; and Charles, Duke of Berry. Through her the Bavarian Wittelsbachs enter the ancestry of both the French and Spanish royal lines. She died at Versailles in 1690.

Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies was Queen of Spain as the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII and regent of the kingdom for her daughter Isabella II. Born in Palermo in 1806 into the Neapolitan branch of the Bourbons, she married Ferdinand in 1829 and was closely associated with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830 that allowed a daughter to inherit the throne. On the king's death in 1833 she governed as regent for the three year old Isabella, and to defend her daughter's crown against the Carlist claim she allied the monarchy with Spanish liberals, presiding over the first parliamentary governments and the sale of church lands. She resigned the regency in 1840 and spent much of her later life in France, where she died in 1878.

Maria Christina of Austria was Queen of Spain as the second wife of Alfonso XII and regent of the kingdom for seventeen years. Born in Moravia in 1858, an Austrian archduchess, she married Alfonso in 1879 and was widowed in 1885 while expecting their third child. That child, born in 1886, was Alfonso XIII, king from the moment of his birth, and she governed as regent until he came of age in 1902. Her regency kept the constitutional system of alternating parties working through difficult years, including the war of 1898 in which Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Dignified and scrupulously constitutional, she withdrew from politics when her son took power and died in Madrid in 1929.

María de las Mercedes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies was Countess of Barcelona as the wife of Juan de Borbón and the mother of King Juan Carlos I. Born in Madrid in 1910, she belonged to the Neapolitan branch of the Bourbons and was a great-granddaughter of Queen Isabella II, so her marriage in Rome in 1935 united two lines of the family. She raised her children through long years of exile in Italy, Switzerland and Estoril in Portugal, and was widely liked in Spain for her directness and informality after the family's return. She lived to see her son reign and her grandson Felipe grow up as heir, and died in Lanzarote in 2000. She is buried beside her husband at El Escorial.

Maria Josepha of Saxony was Dauphine of France as the second wife of Louis, Dauphin of France, and the mother of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. Born in Dresden in 1731, she was a daughter of Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and married the widowed Dauphin in 1747. She won over a court that had expected her to be resented as the daughter of the man who had displaced Marie Leszczyńska's father in Poland, and she became known for her tact, her musicianship and her care in raising her children. She was widowed in 1765 and died at Versailles in 1767, so neither she nor her husband lived to see their sons rule.

Maria Luisa of Savoy was the first wife of Philip V and Queen of Spain from 1701 until her death in 1714. Born in Turin in 1688, a daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, she was the younger sister of Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, the Dauphine of France, so the two sisters stood on opposite sides of the War of the Spanish Succession. Married at thirteen, she proved a determined and popular queen, acting as regent while her husband campaigned and helping to hold Castilian loyalty to the Bourbon cause at the hardest points of the war. She was the mother of Louis I of Spain and of Ferdinand VI, both of whom reigned. She died in Madrid in 1714, at twenty-five.

Maria Luisa of Parma was Queen of Spain as the wife of Charles IV. Born in Parma in 1751, she was a daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma, who was himself a son of Philip V of Spain, so she married her first cousin once removed and was a Bourbon by birth as well as by marriage. She reached Madrid in 1765 and became queen in 1788. Strong willed and closely involved in her husband's government, she was widely held to be the real force behind the rise of the minister Manuel Godoy, and she shared the king's abdication and exile after the events of 1808. Her children included Ferdinand VII and Francisco de Paula. She died in Rome in January 1819, a few weeks before her husband.

Maria Teresa of Savoy was Countess of Artois as the wife of the future Charles X of France. Born in Turin in 1756, she was a daughter of Victor Amadeus III, King of Sardinia, and married Charles in 1773, one of a pair of matches that linked the French royal family to the house of Savoy. She lived on the margins of a court dominated by her sister-in-law Marie Antoinette and took no political role. She was the mother of Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the last Dauphin of France, and of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, whose posthumous son Henri became the legitimist claimant to the French throne. She left France with her husband in 1789 and died in exile at Graz in 1805, before his accession.

Maria Theresa of Spain was Queen of France as the wife of Louis XIV. Born in 1638 at El Escorial, a daughter of Philip IV of Spain, she married Louis in 1660 under the Treaty of the Pyrenees that ended a long war between the two crowns. Her renunciation of her Spanish inheritance was made conditional on a dowry that was never paid, and Louis later used that unpaid dowry to justify French claims on Spanish territory. Of her six children only the eldest, Louis, the Grand Dauphin, survived childhood, and through him she is the ancestress of the Spanish Bourbons. Quiet and devout, she took little part in politics and was respected at court for her piety. She died at Versailles in 1683.

Marie de' Medici was Queen of France as the second wife of Henry IV and regent of the kingdom for her young son Louis XIII. Born in Florence in 1575, a daughter of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, she married Henry in 1600 and bore him six children, among them Louis XIII and Henrietta Maria, later Queen of England. On Henry's death in 1610 she governed France as regent, favouring an alliance with Spain that she sealed by marrying Louis XIII to the Spanish infanta Anne of Austria. Her long struggle for influence with Cardinal Richelieu ended in 1630, after which she lived in exile. A generous patron of art, she commissioned the great Rubens cycle painted for her Luxembourg Palace. She died at Cologne in 1642.

Marie Leszczyńska was Queen of France as the wife of Louis XV and, at more than forty-two years, the longest serving queen consort in French history. Born in Poland in 1703, she was a daughter of Stanisław Leszczyński, the deposed Polish king who later ruled Lorraine, and her marriage in 1725 to the fifteen year old Louis XV surprised Europe because her family was then living in modest exile. She bore ten children, among them Louis, Dauphin of France, whose sons became Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. Devout, musical and a keen amateur painter, she kept a quiet household at Versailles and supported the Polish interest that drew France into the War of the Polish Succession. She died at Versailles in 1768.

Marie Adélaïde of Savoy was Duchess of Burgundy and, briefly, Dauphine of France, and the mother of Louis XV. Born in Turin in 1685, the eldest daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, she came to Versailles in 1696 at the age of ten under a peace treaty between France and Savoy and married Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the following year. Lively and affectionate, she became the favourite companion of the ageing Louis XIV and the leading figure of the court in its last years. Her younger sister Maria Luisa married Philip V of Spain, so the two sisters were queen and dauphine of rival crowns during the War of the Spanish Succession. She died at Versailles in February 1712.

Marie Antoinette was Queen of France as the wife of Louis XVI and is among the most written about figures of the eighteenth century. Born in Vienna in 1755, the youngest daughter of the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, she was married at fourteen to the future Louis XVI to seal the alliance between Austria and France. At Versailles she became a patron of music and fashion and made a private retreat of the Petit Trianon, while her foreign birth and reputation for extravagance drew steady hostility in pamphlets and at court. She and the king were brought to Paris in 1789 and imprisoned in 1792. Of her four children, only Marie-Thérèse Charlotte survived the Revolution. She died in Paris in October 1793.

Queen Sofía of Spain is the wife of Juan Carlos I and was queen consort from 1975 to 2014. Born in Athens in 1938, the eldest child of King Paul of Greece and Queen Frederica, she spent part of her childhood in exile in Egypt and South Africa during the Second World War, studied at the Schloss Salem school in Germany and trained in Athens in childcare, music and archaeology. She married Juan Carlos in 1962 and settled in Spain, where she became known for steady public work in health, education, music and social welfare through the foundation that bears her name. She is the mother of Infanta Elena, Infanta Cristina and King Felipe VI, and the grandmother of Leonor, Princess of Asturias.

Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, known in Spain as Queen Ena, was Queen of Spain as the wife of Alfonso XIII. Born at Balmoral Castle in 1887, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her mother, Princess Beatrice, and converted to Catholicism before her marriage in Madrid in 1906. She devoted much of her public work to the Spanish Red Cross, reorganising it and founding hospitals and nursing schools. She left Spain with her family in 1931 and lived mainly in Lausanne. She returned to Madrid once, in 1968, to stand as godmother at the christening of her great-grandson, the future Felipe VI, and died in Switzerland the following year. Her son Juan was the father of King Juan Carlos I.

Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from his birth in 1886 until 1931. The posthumous son of Alfonso XII and Maria Christina of Austria, he was king from the day he was born and reigned under his mother's regency until 1902. He kept Spain neutral in the First World War and used that neutrality to run an office in Madrid that traced missing prisoners of war for families across Europe. His reign was strained by colonial war in Morocco and by deep social conflict at home, and in 1923 he accepted the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera. After municipal elections in April 1931 returned a strong republican vote, he left Spain without abdicating. He married Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and died in Rome in 1941.