Mark Kennedy Shriver

Romanov Family Tree - Tsar Nicholas II and the Last Imperial House of Russia

The Romanov family ruled the Russian Empire for more than three centuries, and this tree traces the dynasty's final direct line, from Emperor Nicholas I through to his great-great-grandson Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, and the imperial household that perished with him in 1918. ## Origins of the Line The House of Romanov had governed Russia since 1613, but this tree begins with Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855 and whose descendants form an unbroken line to the end of the dynasty. His son Alexander II, the 'Tsar Liberator' who abolished serfdom in 1861, married Maria Alexandrovna and fathered both his successor, Alexander III, and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who later governed Moscow and married Elizabeth Feodorovna, elder sister of the future Empress Alexandra. Alexander III, who married Maria Feodorovna (born Princess Dagmar of Denmark), presided over a conservative, stable reign before his early death in 1894 brought his son Nicholas II to the throne at the age of twenty-six. ## The Last Imperial Family Nicholas II married Alexandra Feodorovna, born Princess Alix of Hesse and a granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria, in 1894. Their five children, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei, grew up largely secluded within the palaces of Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof. Alexei's haemophilia, inherited through his mother, shaped the family's private life profoundly, drawing them into a controversial dependence on Grigori Rasputin. Nicholas's siblings, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, lived through the same collapse: Michael was briefly named Nicholas's successor in March 1917 before declining the crown, ending over three centuries of Romanov rule, while Xenia and Olga escaped Russia with their mother in 1919 and lived out their lives in exile. ## Notable Members and Their Legacy Beyond the throne, this branch of the family produced figures remembered for reasons other than politics: Elizabeth Feodorovna, widowed in 1905, founded a Moscow convent devoted to charitable work; the four Romanov sisters served as wartime nurses; and Anastasia became the subject of one of the twentieth century's most persistent identity mysteries, with impostor claims lasting decades until DNA testing in 2007-2009 confirmed her fate. Nicholas II himself remains a defining figure of early twentieth-century history, his reign bridging the industrializing, autocratic Russia of his father and the revolutionary Russia that followed. ## Significance The direct line traced here represents the final chapter of Romanov rule: a family whose personal history, from Nicholas I's conservative autocracy to Nicholas II's abdication, mirrors Russia's turbulent transition from empire to revolution. Its members remain among the most documented and searched royal figures in history. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Dynasty | House of Romanov | | Ruling dates covered | 1825-1917 (Nicholas I to Nicholas II's abdication) | | Last reigning Tsar | Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917) | | Root figure | Nicholas II | | Notable in-laws | Alexandra Feodorovna (Hesse), Maria Feodorovna (Denmark), Elizabeth Feodorovna (Hesse) | | End of dynasty's rule | March 1917, with Michael Alexandrovich's refusal of the throne |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson

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

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 |

Mahatma Gandhi Family Tree - The Gandhi Lineage

The Gandhi family is the direct biological lineage of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), the Indian independence leader known as Mahatma Gandhi, tracing his descendants through his wife Kasturba Gandhi and their four sons down to his great-grandchildren active in India, South Africa and beyond. This family is entirely distinct from the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, whose surname comes from Indira Gandhi's husband Feroze Gandhy and shares no blood relation with Mahatma Gandhi at all. ## Origins The family's roots lie in Porbandar, in the Kathiawar region of present-day Gujarat, where Mohandas Gandhi was born to Karamchand Gandhi, diwan (chief minister) of the princely state, and his wife Putlibai. Gandhi married Kasturba Makhanji Kapadia in 1883, and the couple's shared life, spanning his legal training in London, two decades of activism in South Africa, and his return to lead India's independence movement, produced four sons: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas. Each son's branch of the family took a markedly different path, from journalism and diplomacy to activism against apartheid, while remaining bound by their shared descent from Mohandas and Kasturba. ## Notable members Manilal Gandhi carried his father's work to South Africa, editing the newspaper Indian Opinion for decades; his children Arun Gandhi and Ela Gandhi became, respectively, an internationally known peace educator and an anti-apartheid Member of the South African Parliament. Devdas Gandhi became a leading Indian journalist as editor of the Hindustan Times, and his four children with Lakshmi Gandhi, Rajmohan, Ramchandra, Gopalkrishna and Tara, went on to prominence as a historian, a philosopher, a diplomat-turned-Governor of West Bengal, and a writer. The family's fourth generation includes Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson through eldest son Harilal's line, known for his writing on his great-grandfather's life and legacy. ## Significance Across four generations, the Gandhi family has remained closely tied to the causes Mohandas Gandhi championed: nonviolent resistance, civil rights, journalism in service of public life, and constructive social work, carried forward in India, South Africa and internationally rather than concentrated in any single institution or country. | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Patriarch | Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) | | Native place | Porbandar, Gujarat, India | | Spouse | Kasturba Gandhi (1869-1944) | | Sons | Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas, Devdas | | Generations covered | 4 (parents to great-grandchildren) | | Members in this tree | 21 | | Distinct from | The Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty |