Sunny Deol

Chakri Dynasty Family Tree - The Royal House of Thailand

The Chakri dynasty is the ruling royal house of Thailand, founded in 1782 by King Rama I (Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke) and continuing through ten monarchs to the reigning king, Rama X (Vajiralongkorn). For nearly two and a half centuries it has presided over Siam's transformation from an early modern Southeast Asian kingdom into the modern nation of Thailand, surviving colonial pressure, foreign war, and the 1932 shift from absolute to constitutional monarchy. ## Origins The dynasty takes its name from its founder's pre-royal title, Chao Phraya Chakri, the highest military rank in the old Siamese order. After serving as a general under King Taksin of Thonburi, he took the throne amid the political turmoil that followed Taksin's downfall, founded Bangkok as the new capital in 1782, and set about restoring the laws, religious texts, and administrative structures that had been lost when Ayutthaya fell to Burma in 1767. His descendants ruled in direct succession from father to son or brother to brother, with several kings, notably Rama III, having no direct heir positioned to inherit and the throne instead passing sideways to a brother or nephew. ## Notable members Several Chakri kings are individually significant. Rama IV (Mongkut) spent nearly three decades as a Buddhist monk before opening Siam to Western trade and diplomacy. His son Rama V (Chulalongkorn) abolished slavery and modernized the kingdom's administration while keeping it the only Southeast Asian state never colonized by a European power. Rama VII (Prajadhipok) presided over the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and abdicated in 1935. Rama IX (Bhumibol Adulyadej), who reigned for seventy years until 2016, became the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history, and his children include the current king, Rama X, and the widely respected Princess Sirindhorn. ## Significance The Chakri dynasty is unique among Southeast Asian royal houses for its continuous, unbroken rule and its central role in preserving Thai national identity and independence through the colonial era. Its monarchs remain constitutionally central to Thai public life today, with the king serving as head of state and a unifying symbol above elected politics. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Founded | 1782, by Rama I | | Current monarch | Rama X (Vajiralongkorn), since 2016 | | Capital established | Bangkok | | Number of kings to date | Ten | | Longest reign | Rama IX (Bhumibol Adulyadej), 1946-2016 | | Country | Thailand (formerly Siam) |

Bachchan Family Tree - Bollywood's First Family

The Bachchan family is an Indian family of poets, film actors and industrialists, descended from the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan of Allahabad and known above all for his elder son, the actor Amitabh Bachchan, whose own marriage and children have kept the family at the centre of Hindi cinema for more than half a century. ## Origins in Allahabad The family's documented line begins with Pratap Narayan Shrivastava, a Srivastava Kayastha from Babupatti in the Raniganj area of Pratapgarh district, in what is now Uttar Pradesh, who settled in Allahabad and worked in the city's paper trade. He and his wife Saraswati Devi had a son, Harivansh Rai, born in 1907. The boy was called "Bachchan" at home, a Hindi word meaning child, and he later took the nickname as his pen name. It has been the family surname ever since, which is why the Bachchans carry a name that began as a term of endearment rather than a caste or clan title. ## Poet, star and the generations after Harivansh Rai Bachchan became one of the most widely read Hindi poets of the twentieth century. His 1935 collection Madhushala is still recited across north India, and he combined writing with teaching English at Allahabad University, a Cambridge doctorate on W. B. Yeats, and service in the Ministry of External Affairs. His first wife, Shyama, died in 1936; his second, Teji Suri, was a Punjabi social activist who became a well-known figure in Delhi's cultural life. Their sons were Amitabh, born in 1942, and the businessman Ajitabh, born in 1947. Amitabh Bachchan's career, from Saat Hindustani in 1969 through Zanjeer, Deewaar and Sholay to Kaun Banega Crorepati, made him the single most recognisable figure in Indian popular culture. He married the actress Jaya Bhaduri in 1973, joining the family to the Bhaduris of Bhopal, whose head was the journalist and author Taroon Kumar Bhaduri. Their daughter Shweta became an author and columnist, and their son Abhishek an actor. ## The Nanda and Rai branches Two marriages widened the family considerably. In 1997 Shweta married Nikhil Nanda of Delhi, chairman of the Escorts Kubota engineering group, the son of the industrialist Rajan Nanda and of Ritu Nanda, herself a daughter of the film-maker Raj Kapoor. Their children are the entrepreneur Navya Naveli Nanda and the actor Agastya Nanda. In 2007 Abhishek married Aishwarya Rai, Miss World 1994 and one of Indian cinema's most internationally recognised stars, bringing in the Rai family of coastal Karnataka: her father Krishnaraj Rai, a biologist with the Indian Army, her mother Brindya, and her brother Aditya. ## Significance Few Indian families span so many fields in four generations: Hindi literature, mainstream cinema, heavy engineering and parliamentary politics, with Jaya Bachchan serving several terms in the Rajya Sabha. The Bachchan house in Mumbai has been a fixed point of Indian public life for decades, and the family's marriages have tied it to the Bhaduris, the Nandas and, through Ritu Nanda, to the Kapoor film dynasty. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founding figure | Harivansh Rai Bachchan (1907-2003), Hindi poet | | Surname origin | "Bachchan", a childhood nickname meaning "child", adopted as a pen name | | Native place | Babupatti, Pratapgarh district, and Allahabad (Prayagraj), Uttar Pradesh | | Best known member | Amitabh Bachchan (born 1942), actor | | Generations covered | Four, from Pratap Narayan Shrivastava to Navya Naveli and Agastya Nanda | | Families married in | Bhaduri of Bhopal, Nanda of Delhi, Rai of Mangalore | | Fields | Hindi poetry, cinema, business, politics |

Habsburg Family Tree - The House of Habsburg

The House of Habsburg was one of the most powerful royal dynasties in European history, ruling Austria from 1282, supplying almost every Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and the empire's dissolution in 1806, and reigning over Spain and its overseas empire from 1516 to 1700. Named for a castle in what is now Switzerland, the family rose from modest Swabian counts to sovereigns of lands stretching from the Danube to the Andes, and its senior line ended only in 1918 with the fall of Austria-Hungary. ## Origins The dynasty takes its name from Habsburg Castle in the Aargau, in present-day Switzerland, held by a family of counts with scattered lands in Swabia and Alsace. Its fortunes changed in 1273, when the prince-electors chose Rudolf I as King of the Romans after a long interregnum. Rudolf defeated Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1278, took the duchies of Austria and Styria, and granted them to his sons, moving the family's centre of gravity permanently to Vienna. Two centuries later the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy, and of their son Philip the Handsome to Joanna of Castile, converted a regional Alpine power into a continental one within a single generation. ## Notable members Charles V inherited Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and the Spanish Americas, and on his abdication in 1556 divided them: Spain and the Low Countries to his son Philip II, the Austrian lands and the imperial title to his brother Ferdinand I. The Spanish branch ran from Philip II through Philip III and Philip IV to Charles II, whose death in 1700 without an heir set off the War of the Spanish Succession. The Austrian branch ran from Ferdinand I through Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III to Charles VI, whose daughter Maria Theresa became the only woman to rule the Habsburg lands in her own right. Her marriage to Francis I Stephen of Lorraine founded the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, which produced Joseph II, Leopold II, Marie Antoinette, Francis II, and the long-reigning Franz Joseph I. ## Significance For six centuries the Habsburgs shaped the map of Europe less by conquest than by marriage, holding together a multilingual realm of Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Croats and others under a single crown. They led the Counter-Reformation, halted Ottoman expansion at Vienna in 1683, and gave Europe both the Thirty Years' War and the Congress system that followed Napoleon. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 triggered the First World War, and the abdication of Charles I in 1918 ended Habsburg rule. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder of the royal line | Rudolf I of Habsburg, King of the Romans from 1273 | | Family seat | Habsburg Castle, Aargau; later Vienna, Graz and Madrid | | Height of power | Charles V (1500 to 1558), ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Naples and Spanish America | | Spanish line | Philip II to Charles II, 1556 to 1700 | | Austrian line | Ferdinand I to Charles VI, 1521 to 1740 | | Habsburg-Lorraine | From Maria Theresa and Francis I Stephen, 1736 onward | | Last reigning monarch | Charles I of Austria, who left government in 1918 | | Principal titles | Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor of Austria, King of Spain, Hungary and Bohemia |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson