Moulay Ahmed

Belgian Royal Family Tree - The House of Belgium from Leopold I to Princess Elisabeth

The Belgian royal family, formally the House of Belgium and dynastically a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is the reigning family of Belgium, founded when the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld accepted the throne of the newly independent kingdom in 1831 and continuing today through King Philippe and his heir, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830 and chose a constitutional monarchy. Its National Congress looked abroad for a sovereign who could balance French and British interests, and settled on Leopold, a widowed, well-connected and famously cautious prince who had already turned down the crown of Greece. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, still the Belgian national day. Seven monarchs have reigned since: Leopold I, Leopold II, Albert I, Leopold III, Baudouin, Albert II and Philippe. ## Origins The dynasty's roots are in the small Thuringian duchy of Saxe-Coburg, whose princes married into half the thrones of nineteenth-century Europe. Leopold I was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and his second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, daughter of the French king Louis Philippe I, tied the new kingdom to Paris as well as London. The crown did not pass in a straight line: Leopold II's only son died at the age of nine, so the succession moved to Leopold II's brother Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son, Albert I. Every Belgian monarch since 1909 descends from that collateral branch. ## Notable members Leopold II is the most studied and most criticised figure in the family, remembered for the industrial boom and monumental building of his reign and, above all, for his personal rule over the Congo Free State. Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Bavaria became wartime symbols of Belgian resistance behind the Yser in 1914. Leopold III's surrender in 1940 and his conduct under occupation triggered the political crisis known as the Royal Question and ended in his abdication. Baudouin reigned for 42 years and presided over Congolese independence and Belgium's transformation into a federal state. Daughters of the house carried its blood outward: Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico, Marie-Jose was the last Queen of Italy, and Josephine-Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. ## Significance In a country divided by language, the monarchy has been the one institution claimed by both Flemish and Walloon Belgians, and the king's role in brokering coalition governments remains politically real rather than ceremonial. The family has also changed with the country: equal succession was introduced in 1991, making Princess Elisabeth the first female Duchess of Brabant and the future first queen regnant of the Belgians, and in 2020 a court recognised Delphine of Saxe-Coburg as a daughter of Albert II. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Dynasty | House of Belgium (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) | | Country | Kingdom of Belgium | | Founder | Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790-1865) | | Reigning since | 21 July 1831 | | Monarchs to date | Seven, from Leopold I to Philippe | | Current head | King Philippe (born 1960), reigning since 2013 | | Heir apparent | Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) | | Principal residences | Royal Palace of Brussels, Castle of Laeken | | Motto | L'union fait la force / Eendracht maakt macht |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson

Stuart Family Tree - The House of Stuart from Mary, Queen of Scots to Bonnie Prince Charlie

The House of Stuart was the royal dynasty that ruled Scotland from 1371 and both Scotland and England from 1603 until 1714, giving Britain fourteen monarchs from Robert II to Queen Anne as well as the Jacobite claimants who carried its cause into exile. Spelled Stewart in Scotland and Stuart after Mary, Queen of Scots adopted the French form, the family holds the unusual distinction of having united two crowns by inheritance rather than conquest, and of ending in a disputed succession that reshaped the British constitution. ## Origins The family took its name from its office. The Stewarts were hereditary High Stewards of Scotland, a post granted in the twelfth century to a Breton house settled in Renfrewshire. In 1315 Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward, married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert the Bruce. Their son became Robert II in 1371 when the direct Bruce line failed, and the stewardship turned into a crown. For more than two centuries afterwards the Stewarts ruled Scotland alone, through a run of reigns cut short by battle, captivity and long royal minorities that left the nobility unusually powerful. ## Notable members James IV, the most cultivated of the Scottish kings, married Margaret Tudor in 1503 and so planted the claim that would carry his descendants to the English throne. His granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots became queen at six days old, reigned briefly and turbulently, and was deposed in 1567 and executed in England twenty years later. Her son, James VI of Scotland, inherited the English crown in 1603 as James I and became the first monarch to rule both kingdoms. His son Charles I lost the Civil Wars and his throne; Charles II returned at the Restoration in 1660; James II and VII was deposed in the Revolution of 1688, after which his daughters Mary II and Anne reigned in his place. In exile his son James Francis Edward Stuart and grandson Charles Edward Stuart, remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led the Jacobite attempts to recover the throne, ending with the rising of 1745. ## Significance No other British dynasty changed the shape of the state so much. The Stuarts brought Scotland and England under one sovereign, presided over the King James Bible and the theatre of Shakespeare's late career, lost a king to Parliament, and provoked the settlements of 1689 and 1701 that made the monarchy answerable to Parliament and Protestant by statute. When Queen Anne died childless in 1714, the crown passed under the Act of Settlement to the descendants of her cousin Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James VI and I, so every British monarch since is still a Stuart descendant. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Robert II, King of Scots from 1371 | | Ruled | Scotland 1371 to 1714; England and Ireland 1603 to 1714 | | Origin | Renfrewshire, Scotland | | Union of the Crowns | 1603, under James VI of Scotland and I of England | | Last reigning monarch | Anne, Queen of Great Britain, died 1714 | | Jacobite claimants | James Francis Edward, Charles Edward and Henry Benedict Stuart | | Succeeded by | The House of Hanover, through Sophia of Hanover |

Rockefeller Family Tree - America's Oil and Philanthropy Dynasty

The Rockefeller family is an American business and philanthropic dynasty founded on the Standard Oil fortune of John D. Rockefeller, whose descendants have shaped American banking, conservation, medicine, modern art and national politics across five generations. From a modest upstate New York farmhouse the family rose to control the largest industrial enterprise of the Gilded Age, then spent the twentieth century converting that fortune into foundations, museums, parks and public office. ## Origins The line begins with William Avery Rockefeller (1810-1906), a traveling salesman from Granger, New York, and his wife Eliza Davison (1813-1889), who married in 1837 and raised six children in Richford, Moravia and Owego before the family moved to Ohio. Their eldest son, John D. Rockefeller, began as a Cleveland bookkeeper, entered oil refining in 1863 and incorporated the Standard Oil Company in 1870 together with his younger brother William Rockefeller. By the 1880s Standard Oil refined the great majority of American petroleum, until the Supreme Court ordered its dissolution in 1911. ## Notable members John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller had four children who reached adulthood, among them the Chicago arts patron Edith Rockefeller McCormick and the family's only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. With Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art, John Jr. had six children who defined the family's public face: Abby "Babs" Rockefeller Mauze, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, Nelson Rockefeller, who served four terms as Governor of New York and then as Vice President of the United States, the conservationist and venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller, Governor of Arkansas, and the banker David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan. Their children, known within the family as the Cousins, include Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Asmat art collector Michael Rockefeller, Lieutenant Governor Winthrop Paul Rockefeller of Arkansas, the economist Neva Goodwin and the Synergos founder Peggy Dulany. ## Significance The family's lasting mark is institutional rather than dynastic. The Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, Lincoln Center, the Asia Society and several national parks all trace their founding or their endowment to a Rockefeller. Few American families have moved so completely from industrial fortune to organized philanthropy and elected office within three generations. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Surname | Rockefeller | | Origin | Richford, New York, United States | | Founder | John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) | | Family business | Standard Oil, later Chase Manhattan Bank | | Known for | Standard Oil, the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art | | Public offices held | Vice President of the United States, Governor of New York, Governor of Arkansas, United States Senator | | Generations covered | Five, from William Avery Rockefeller to the fourth-generation Cousins |