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 |
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