Jeanne d'Albret

Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, reigned as King of France and Navarre from 1643 to 1715, a span of seventy-two years that remains the longest documented reign of any European sovereign. The son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he succeeded at the age of four, took personal control of government on Mazarin's death in 1661, and ruled thereafter without a first minister. He made the court at Versailles the centre of French political and cultural life, backed the arts and the sciences through royal academies, revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and fought a long series of wars that left France dominant but exhausted. His marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain produced the Grand Dauphin, and his grandson Philip took the Spanish throne in 1700.

Louis, known as the Grand Dauphin and addressed at court simply as Monseigneur, was the eldest son of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain and heir to the French throne for almost fifty years without ever reigning. Born at Fontainebleau in 1661, he was educated under the historian Bossuet, commanded French forces in the Rhineland campaign of 1688, and otherwise lived apart from government at his château of Meudon, where he assembled a notable art collection. His marriage to Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria produced three sons: Louis, Duke of Burgundy, Philip, who became Philip V of Spain, and Charles, Duke of Berry. He died at Meudon in 1711, four years before his father.

Louis, Duke of Burgundy, was the eldest son of the Grand Dauphin and the grandson of Louis XIV, and was heir to the French throne for the last year of his life. Born at Versailles in 1682, he was educated by the archbishop and writer Fénelon, who turned a hot-tempered boy into a serious and devout prince with reforming ideas about kingship and the burden of war on the French people. He commanded in Flanders during the War of the Spanish Succession and became Dauphin on his father's death in 1711. His marriage to Marie Adélaïde of Savoy produced the future Louis XV. He died at Marly in February 1712, only days after his wife, leaving his young son as heir to his great-grandfather.

Louis I was King of Spain for seven months in 1724 and remains the shortest reigning monarch in Spanish history. Born in Madrid in 1707, he was the eldest son of Philip V and Maria Luisa of Savoy and the first Spanish born member of the Bourbon dynasty. He was created Prince of Asturias as heir to the throne and married Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, a daughter of the Regent of France, in 1722. His father abdicated in his favour in January 1724, apparently intending to retire from public life, and the young king took over a government still largely run by his father's ministers. He died in Madrid in August 1724, and Philip V resumed the crown.

Louis, Dauphin of France, was the only surviving son of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska and the father of three kings, yet he never reigned himself. Born at Versailles in 1729, his birth secured the direct succession and was greeted with public rejoicing. He was pious, studious and associated with the devout party at court, and he was largely kept away from government by his father. His first wife, Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, died young; his second marriage, to Maria Josepha of Saxony, produced Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X, who between them occupied the French throne for all but three of the years from 1774 to 1830. He died at Fontainebleau in 1765, nine years before his father.

Louis XVI was the last king of France of the old regime, reigning from 1774 until the monarchy was abolished in 1792. Born at Versailles in 1754, a grandson of Louis XV, he came to the throne at nineteen and married the Austrian archduchess Marie Antoinette. He supported the American colonies against Britain, backed attempts at fiscal and administrative reform, and abolished serfdom on the royal domain, but the crown's debts forced him to summon the Estates General in 1789, opening the French Revolution. He accepted the constitutional monarchy of 1791, was suspended after the storming of the Tuileries in August 1792, and was tried by the National Convention. He died in Paris in January 1793.

Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, was the elder son of Charles X and the last Dauphin of France. Born at Versailles in 1775, he spent his youth in emigration and in 1799 married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, the surviving daughter of Louis XVI, a match intended to reunite the senior royal line. He returned to France in 1814 and in 1823 commanded the French army that marched into Spain to restore the authority of Ferdinand VII. He became Dauphin when his father took the throne in 1824. During the July Revolution of 1830 he signed an act of abdication minutes after his father's, so that legitimists counted him as Louis XIX for a matter of moments. He died at Gorizia in 1844.

Henri, Count of Chambord, was the posthumous son of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, and the last direct male heir of the senior French Bourbon line. Born in Paris in 1820, he was hailed by royalists as the child of miracle because his birth came after his father's death and secured the succession. Charles X abdicated in his favour in 1830, and legitimists thereafter recognised him as Henry V, though he never reigned and spent his life abroad, chiefly at Frohsdorf in Austria. In 1873, with a monarchist majority in the National Assembly, he came close to being placed on a restored throne, but he refused to abandon the white flag of the Bourbons for the tricolour and the plan collapsed. He died childless in 1883.

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.

Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona, was the head of the Spanish royal house from 1941 to 1977 and the father of King Juan Carlos I. Born at the palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in 1913, the third son of Alfonso XIII, he trained as a naval officer with the British Royal Navy and became heir when his two elder brothers renounced their rights. He lived in exile in Italy, Switzerland and Portugal after 1931, pressed the case for a restored constitutional monarchy against Franco's regime in his Lausanne Manifesto of 1945, and agreed that his son should be educated in Spain. He never reigned: in 1977, two years after Juan Carlos became king, he formally handed over his dynastic rights. He died in Pamplona in 1993 and was buried among the kings at El Escorial.

Juan Carlos I was King of Spain from 1975 to 2014 and the monarch under whom the country returned to democracy. Born in Rome in 1938 during his family's exile, the son of Juan, Count of Barcelona, and María de las Mercedes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, he was sent to Spain for his education in 1948 and trained at the army, naval and air force academies. Franco named him his successor as head of state in 1969, and he was proclaimed king two days after Franco's death in November 1975. He then dismantled the institutions he had inherited, appointing Adolfo Suárez to steer the transition that produced free elections in 1977 and the democratic constitution of 1978. He abdicated in June 2014 in favour of his son Felipe VI.