Public Family Trees
Real families, shared by their owners and reviewed by our team - browse the stories and connections behind them.
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 |
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 |
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