House of Bourbon

Origins

The pre-Capetian House of Bourbon was a noble family, dating at least from the beginning of the 13th century, when the estate of Bourbon was ruled by the Sire de Bourbon who was a vassal of the King of France. The term House of Bourbon ("Maison de Bourbon") is sometimes used to refer to this first house and the House of Bourbon-Dampierre, the second family to rule the seigneury.

In 1272, Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth and youngest son of King Louis IX of France, married Beatrix of Bourbon, heiress to the lordship of Bourbon and member of the House of Bourbon-Dampierre. Their son Louis was made Duke of Bourbon in 1327. His descendant, the Constable of France Charles de Bourbon, was the last of the senior Bourbon line when he died in 1527. Because he chose to fight under the banner of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and lived in exile from France, his title was discontinued after his death.

The remaining line of Bourbons henceforth descended from James I, Count of La Marche, the younger son of Louis I, Duke of Bourbon. With the death of his grandson James II, Count of La Marche in 1438, the senior line of the Count of La Marche became extinct. All future Bourbons would descend from James II's younger brother, Louis, who became the Count of Vendôme through his mother's inheritance. In 1525, at the death of Charles IV, Duke of Alençon, all of the princes of the blood royal were Bourbons; all remaining members of the House of Valois were members of the king's immediate family.

In 1514, Charles, Count of Vendôme had his title raised to Duke of Vendôme. His son Antoine became King of Navarre, on the northern side of the Pyrenees, by marriage in 1555. Two of Antoine's younger brothers were Cardinal Archbishop Charles de Bourbon and the French and Huguenot general Louis de Bourbon, 1st Prince of Condé. Louis' male-line descendants, the Princes de Condé, survived until 1830. Finally, in 1589, the House of Valois died out and Antoine's son Henry III of Navarre became Henry IV of France.

List of Bourbons

Bourbon branches

Family from India's claim to be a branch and their claim to The "Throne of France"

Bourbons of India, claim to be descendants of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, of the first House of Bourbon-Montpensier.

As per the latest research carried out by Prince Michael of Greece and incorporated in his historical novel, Le Rajah Bourbon, Balthazar Napoleon IV de Bourbon from India is the senior heir in line to the French throne.

France

Rise of Henry IV

The first Bourbon king of France was Henry IV. He was born on 13 December 1553 in the Kingdom of Navarre. Antoine de Bourbon, his father, was a ninth-generation descendant of King Louis IX of France. Jeanne d'Albret, his mother, was the Queen of Navarre and niece of King Francis I of France. He was baptized Catholic, but raised Calvinist. After his father was killed in 1562, he became Duke of Vendôme at the age of 10, with Admiral Gaspard de Coligny (1519–1572) as his regent. Seven years later, the young duke became the nominal leader of the Huguenots after the death of his uncle the Prince de Condé in 1569.

Henry succeeded to Navarre as Henry III when his mother died in 1572. That same year Catherine de' Medici, mother of King Charles IX of France, arranged for the marriage of her daughter, Margaret of Valois, to Henry, ostensibly to advance peace between Catholics and Huguenots. Many Huguenots gathered in Paris for the wedding on 24 August, but were ambushed and slaughtered by Catholics in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Henry saved his own life by converting to Catholicism. He repudiated his conversion in 1576 and resumed his leadership of the Huguenots.

The period from 1576 to 1584 was relatively calm in France, with the Huguenots consolidating control of much of the south with only occasional interference from the royal government. Extended civil war erupted again in 1584, when François, Duke of Anjou, younger brother of King Henry III of France, died, leaving Navarre next in line for the throne. Thus began the War of the Three Henrys, as Henry of Navarre, Henry III, and the ultra-Catholic leader, Henry of Guise, fought a confusing three-cornered struggle for dominance. After Henry III was assassinated on 31 July 1589, Navarre claimed the throne as the first Bourbon king of France, Henry IV.

Much of Catholic France, organized into the Catholic League, refused to recognize a Protestant monarch and instead recognized Henry IV's uncle, Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, as rightful king, and the civil war continued. Henry won a crucial victory at Ivry on 14 March 1590 and, following the death of the Cardinal the same year, the forces of the League lacked an obvious Catholic candidate for the throne and divided into various factions. Nevertheless, as a Protestant, Henry IV was unable to take Paris, a Catholic stronghold, or to decisively defeat his enemies, now supported by the Spanish. He reconverted to Catholicism in 1593 and was crowned king retroactively to 1589 at the Cathedral of Chartres on 27 February 1594.

Early Bourbons in France

Henry granted the Edict of Nantes on 13 April 1598, establishing Catholicism as an official state religion but also granting the Huguenots a measure of religious tolerance and political freedom short of full equality with the practice of Catholicism. This compromise ended the religious wars in France. That same year the Treaty of Vervins ended the war with Spain, adjusted the Spanish-French border, and resulted in a belated recognition by Spain of Henry as king of France.

Ably assisted by Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, Henry reduced the land tax known as the taille; promoted agriculture, public works, construction of highways, and the first French canal; started such important industries as the tapestry works of the Gobelins; and intervened in favor of Protestants in the duchies and earldoms along the German frontier. This last was to be the cause of his assassination.

Henry's marriage to Margaret, which had produced no heir, was annulled in 1599, and he married Marie de' Medici, niece of the grand duke of Tuscany. A son, Louis, was born to them in 1601. Henry IV was assassinated on 14 May 1610 in Paris. Louis XIII was only nine years old when he succeeded his father. He was to prove a weak ruler; his reign was effectively a series of distinct regimes, depending who held the effective reins of power. At first, Marie de' Medici, his mother, served as regent and advanced a pro-Spanish policy. To deal with the financial troubles of France, Louis summoned the Estates General in 1614; this would be the last time that body met until the eve of the French Revolution. Marie arranged the 1615 marriage of Louis to Anne of Austria, the daughter of King Philip III of Spain.

In 1617, Louis conspired with Charles d'Albert, 1st Duke of Luynes to dispense with her influence, having her favorite Concino Concini assassinated on 26 April of that year. After some years of weak government by Louis's favorites, the King made Cardinal Richelieu, a former protégé of his mother, the chief minister of France in 1624.

Richelieu advanced an anti-Habsburg policy. He arranged for Louis' sister, Henrietta Maria, to marry King Charles I of England, on 11 May 1625. Her pro-Catholic propaganda in England was one of the contributing factors to the English Civil War. Richelieu, as ambitious for France and the French monarchy as for himself, laid the ground for the absolute monarchy that would last in France until the Revolution. He wanted to establish a dominating position for France in Europe, and he wanted to unify France under the monarchy. He established the role of intendants, non-noble men whose arbitrary powers of administration were granted (and revocable) by the monarch, superseding many of the traditional duties and privileges of the noble governors.

Louis XIV and Louis XV

Louis XIV succeeded his father at four years of age; he would go on to become the most powerful king in French history. His mother Anne served as his regent with her favorite Jules, Cardinal Mazarin, as chief minister. When Louis was age 7, Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy became governor of the young king. The main childhood places of Louis XIV were the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hôtel de Villeroy. Mazarin continued the policies of Richelieu, bringing the Thirty Years' War to a successful conclusion in 1648 and defeating the nobility's challenge to royal absolutism in a series of civil wars known as the Frondes. He continued to war with Spain until 1659.

In that year the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed signifying a major shift in power, France had replaced Spain as the dominant state in Europe. The treaty called for an arranged marriage between Louis and his cousin Maria Theresa, a daughter of King Philip IV of Spain by his first wife Elisabeth, the sister of Louis XIII. They were married in 1660 and had a son, Louis, in 1661. Mazarin died on 9 March 1661 and it was expected that Louis would appoint another chief minister, as had become the tradition, but instead he shocked the country by announcing he would rule alone.

For six years Louis reformed the finances of his state and built formidable armed forces. France fought a series of wars from 1667 onward and gained some territory on its northern and eastern borders. Maria Theresa died in 1683 and the next year he secretly married the devoutly Catholic Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. Louis XIV began to persecute Protestants, undoing the religious tolerance established by his grandfather Henry IV, culminating in his revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

The last war waged by Louis XIV proved to be one of the most important to dynastic Europe. In 1700, King Charles II of Spain, a Habsburg, died without a son. Louis's only legitimate son, the Grand Dauphin, as the late king's nephew, was the closest heir; and Charles willed the kingdom to the Dauphin's second son, the Duke of Anjou. Other powers, particularly the Austrian Habsburgs, who had the next closest claims, objected to such a vast increase in French power.

Initially, most of the other powers were willing to accept Anjou's reign as Philip V, but Louis's mishandling of their concerns soon drove the English, Dutch and other powers to join the Austrians in a coalition against France. The War of the Spanish Succession began in 1701 and raged for 12 years. In the end Louis's grandson was recognized as king of Spain, but he was obliged to agree to the forfeiture of succession rights in France, the Spanish Habsburgs' other European territories were largely ceded to Austria, and France was nearly bankrupted by the cost of the struggle. Louis died on 1 September 1715 ending his seventy-two-year reign, the longest in European history.

French Revolution

Louis XVI had become the Dauphin of France upon the death of his father Louis, the son of Louis XV, in 1765. He married Marie Antoinette of Austria, a daughter of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, in 1770. Louis intervened in the American Revolution against Britain in 1778, but he is most remembered for his role in the French Revolution. France was in financial turmoil and Louis was forced to convene the Estates-General on 5 May 1789.

They formed the National Assembly and forced Louis to accept a constitution that limited his powers on 14 July 1789. He tried to flee France in June 1791, but was captured. The French monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792 and a republic was proclaimed. The chain of Bourbon monarchs begun in 1589 was broken. Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793.

Marie Antoinette and her son, Louis, were held as prisoners. Many French royalists proclaimed him Louis XVII, but he never reigned. She was executed on 16 October 1793. He died of tuberculosis on 8 June 1795 at the age of ten while in captivity.

The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars spread nationalism and anti-absolutism throughout Europe, and the other Bourbon monarchs were threatened. Ferdinand IV was forced to flee from Naples in 1806 when Emperor Napoleon deposed him and installed his brother, Joseph, as king. Ferdinand continued to rule from Sicily until 1815.

Napoleon conquered Parma in 1800 and compensated the Bourbon duke with Etruria, a new kingdom he created from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It was short-lived, counting only two monarchs, Louis and Louis II, as Napoleon annexed Etruria in 1807.

King Charles IV of Spain had been an ally of France. He succeeded his father, Charles III, in 1788. At first he declared war on France on 7 March 1793, but he made peace on 22 June 1795. This peace became an alliance on 19 August 1796. His chief minister, Manuel de Godoy convinced Charles that his son, Ferdinand, was plotting to overthrow him. Napoleon exploited the situation and invaded Spain in March 1808. This led to an uprising that forced Charles to abdicate on 19 March 1808 in favor of his son, who became Ferdinand VII. Napoleon forced Ferdinand to return the crown to Charles on 30 April and then convinced Charles to relinquish it to him on 10 May 1808. In turn, he gave it to his brother, Joseph, king of Naples on 6 June 1808. Joseph abandoned Naples to Joachim Murat, the husband of Napoleon's sister. This was very unpopular in Spain and resulted in the Peninsular War, a struggle that would contribute to the downfall of Napoleon.

Bourbon Restoration

With the abdication of Napoleon on 11 April 1814 the Bourbon dynasty was restored to the Kingdom of France in the person of Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI. Napoleon escaped from exile and Louis fled in March 1815. Louis was again restored after the Battle of Waterloo on 7 July 1815.

The conservative elements of Europe dominated the post-Napoleonic age, but the values of the French Revolution could not be easily swept aside. Louis granted a constitution on 14 June 1814 to appease the liberals, but the ultra-royalist party, led by his brother, Charles, continued to influence his reign. When he died in 1824 his brother became king as Charles X much to the dismay of French liberals. In a saying ascribed to Talleyrand, "they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

Charles passed several laws that appealed to the upper class but angered the middle class. The situation came to a head when he appointed a new minister on 5 August 1829 who did not have the confidence of the Chamber of Deputies. The chamber censured the king on 18 March 1830 and in response Charles proclaimed the July Ordinances on 25 July 1830 intended to silence criticism against him. This resulted in the July Revolution.

As a compromise the crown was offered to Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, a descendant of the brother of Louis XIV, and the head of the Orléanist cadet branch of the Bourbons. Agreeing to reign constitutionally and under the tricolour, he was proclaimed King of the French on 7 August 1830. The resulting regime, known as the July Monarchy, lasted until the Revolution of 1848. The Bourbon monarchy in France ended on 24 February 1848, when Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate and the short-lived Second Republic was established.

Some Legitimists refused to recognize the Orléanist monarchy. After the death of Charles in 1836 his son was proclaimed Louis XIX, though this title was never formally recognized. Charles' grandson Henri, Count of Chambord, the last Bourbon claimant of the French crown, was proclaimed by some Henry V, but the French monarchy was never restored.

Following the 1870 collapse of the Second French Empire of Emperor Napoleon III, Henri was offered a restored throne. However Chambord refused to accept the throne unless France abandoned the revolution-inspired tricolour and accepted what he regarded as the true Bourbon flag of France, featuring the fleur-de-lis. The tricolour, originally associated with the French Revolution and the First Republic, had been used by the July Monarchy, the Second Republic and both Empires; the French National Assembly could not possibly agree.

Bourbons of Spain and Italy

Philip V

The Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon, also known as the House of Bourbon-Anjou, was founded by Philip V. He was born in 1683 at Versailles, the second son of the Grand Dauphin, who was eldest son of Louis XIV. He was Duke of Anjou and probably never expected to be raised to a rank higher than that. However, King Charles II of Spain, dying without issue, willed the throne to his grand-nephew the Duke of Anjou, who was the younger grandson of his eldest sister Marie-Thérèse, who had married Louis XIV.

The prospect of Bourbons on both the French and Spanish thrones was resisted as creating an imbalance of power in Europe by its powers and, upon Charles II's death on 1 November 1700, a Grand Alliance of European nations united against Philip. This was known as the War of the Spanish Succession. In the Treaty of Utrecht, signed on 11 April 1713, Philip was recognized as king of Spain but his renunciation of succession rights to France was affirmed and, of the Spanish Empire's other European territories, Sicily was ceded to Savoy, and the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, and Naples were allotted to the Austrian Habsburgs.

Philip had two sons by his first wife. After her death, he married Elisabeth Farnese, niece of Francesco Farnese, Duke of Parma, in 1714. She presented Philip with three sons, for whom she had ambitions of securing Italian crowns. She therefore induced Philip to occupy Sardinia and Sicily in 1717.

A Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Austria and the Netherlands was organized on 2 August 1718 to stop him. In the Treaty of The Hague, signed on 17 February 1720, Philip renounced his conquests of Sardinia and Sicily, but he assured the ascension of his eldest son by Elisabeth to the Duchy of Parma upon the reigning duke's death. Philip abdicated in January 1724 in favor of Louis I, his eldest son with his first wife, but Louis died in August and Philip resumed the crown.

When the War of the Polish Succession began in 1733, Philip and Elisabeth saw another opportunity to advance the claims of their sons and recover at least part of the former possessions of the Spanish crown on the Italian peninsula. Philip signed the Family Compact with Louis XV, his nephew and king of France. Charles, Duke of Parma since 1731, invaded Naples. At the conclusion of peace on 13 November 1738, control of Parma and Piacenza was ceded to Austria, which had occupied the duchies but was now forced to recognise Charles as king of Naples and Sicily. Philip also used the War of the Austrian Succession to win back control of Parma. He did not live to see it to its conclusion, however, dying in 1746.

Ferdinand VI and Charles III

Ferdinand VI, second son of Philip V and his first wife, succeeded his father. He was a peace-loving monarch who kept Spain out of the Seven Years' War. He died in 1759 in the midst of that conflict and was succeeded by his half-brother Charles III, already reigning as king in Naples and Sicily.

Following Spain's victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Bitonto, it proved inexpedient to reunite Naples and Sicily to Spain, so as a compromise Charles became King of Naples, as Charles IV and VII of Sicily. Following Charles' accession to the Spanish throne in 1759, he was required, by the Treaty of Naples of 3 October 1759, to abdicate Naples and Sicily to his third son, Ferdinand, thus initiating the branch known as the Neapolitan Bourbons.

Charles revived the Family Compact with France on 15 August 1761 and joined in the Seven Years' War against Britain in 1762; the reformist policies he had espoused in Naples were pursued with similar energy in Spain, where he completely overhauled the cumbersome bureaucracy of the state. As a French ally, he opposed Britain during the American Revolution in June 1779, supplying large quantities of weapons and munitions to the rebels and keeping one third of all the British forces in the Americas occupied defending Florida and what is now Alabama, which were ultimately recaptured by Spain. Charles died in 1788.

Bourbons of Parma

Elisabeth Farnese's ambitions were realized at the conclusion of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748 when the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, already occupied by Spanish troops, were ceded by Austria to her second son, Philip, and combined with the former Duchy of Guastalla of the Gonzagas. Elisabeth died in 1766.

Later Bourbon monarchs outside France

Upon the fall of the French Empire, Ferdinand I was restored to his throne in Naples, forming the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1816 and founding the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. His subjects revolted in 1820 and he was forced to grant a constitution; Austria invaded in March 1821 at his request and revoked the constitution. He was succeeded by his son, Francis I, in 1825 and by his grandson, Ferdinand II, in 1830. A revolution in Sicily erupted in January 1848 and Ferdinand was also forced to grant a constitution. This constitution was revoked in 1849. Ferdinand was succeeded by his son, Francis II, in May 1859.

When Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Naples in 1860, Francis restored the constitution in an attempt to save his sovereignty. He fled to the fortress of Gaeta, which was besieged and captured by the Piedmontese troops in February 1861. His kingdom was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861, after the fall the fortress of Messina (surrendered on 12 March), although the Neapolitan troops in Civitella del Tronto resisted three days longer.

After the fall of Napoleon, Napoleon's wife, Maria Louisa, was made Duchess of Parma. As compensation, Charles Louis, the former king of Etruria, was made the Duke of Lucca. When Maria Louisa died in 1847 he was restored to Parma as Charles II. Lucca was incorporated into Tuscany. He was succeeded by his son, Charles III, and grandson, Robert I, in 1854. The people of Parma voted for a union with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860. After Italian unification the next year, the Bourbon dynasty in Italy was no more.

Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain in March 1814. Like his Italian Bourbon counterpart, his subjects revolted against him in January 1820 and he was forced to grant a constitution. A French army invaded in 1823 and the constitution was revoked. Ferdinand married his fourth wife, Maria Christina, the daughter of Francis I, the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies, in 1829. Despite his many marriages he did not have a son, so in 1833 he was influenced by his wife to abolish the Salic Law so that their daughter, Isabella, could become queen, depriving his brother, Don Carlos, of the throne.

Isabella II succeeded her father when he died in 1833. She was only three years old and Maria Cristina, her mother, served as regent. Maria knew that she needed the support of the liberals to oppose Don Carlos so she granted a constitution in 1834. Don Carlos found his greatest support in Catalonia and the Basque country because the constitution centralized the provinces thus denying them the autonomy they sought. He was defeated and fled the country in 1839. Isabella was declared of age in 1843 and she married her cousin Francisco de Asís, the son of her father's brother, on 10 October 1846. A military revolution broke out against Isabella in 1868 and she was deposed on 29 September 1868. She abdicated in favor of her son, Alfonso, in 1870, but Spain was proclaimed a republic for a brief time.

List of Bourbon rulers

France

Dates indicate reigns, not lifetimes:

Henry IV, the Great (1589–1610)

Louis XIII, the Just (1610–1643)

Louis XIV, the Sun King (1643–1715)

Louis XV, the Well-Beloved (1715–1774)

Louis XVI (1774–1792)

Dates indicate claims, not lifetimes:

Louis XVI (1792–1793)

Louis XVII (1793–1795)

Louis XVIII, the Desired (1795–1814)

Dates indicate reigns, not lifetimes:

Louis XVIII (1814–1824)

Charles X (1824–1830)

Louis Philippe I (House of Bourbon-Orléans) (1830–1848)

Dates indicate claims, not lifetimes:

Charles X (1830–1836)

Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (Louis XIX) (1836–1844)

Henri, Count of Chambord (Henri V) (1844–1883)

Dates indicate claims, not lifetimes:

Prince Juan, Count of Montizón (Jean III) (1883–1887)

Prince Carlos, Duke of Madrid (Charles XI) (1887–1909)

Kingdom of Spain

Dates indicate seniority, not lifetimes. Where reign as king or queen of Spain is different, this is noted:

Philip V (1700–1746) [abdicated 1724, resumed throne on death of son]

Louis I [King 1724; ruled less than one year]

Ferdinand VI (1746–1759)

Charles III (1759–1788)

Charles IV (1788–1808)

Ferdinand VII (1808–1833) [King 1808, 1813–1833]

Isabella II (1833–1870) [Queen 1833–1868]

Alfonso XII (1870–1885) [King 1874–1885]

Alfonso XIII (1886–1941) [King 1886–1931]

Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona (Juan III) (1941–1977) [did not become King]

Juan Carlos I (1977–2014) [King 1975–2014]

Felipe VI (2014–present)

Dates indicate claims, not lifetimes:

Infante Carlos María Isidro of Spain, Count of Molina (Carlos V) (1833–1845)

Carlos Luis de Borbón, Count of Montemolin (Carlos VI) (1845–1861)

Prince Juan, Count of Montizón (Juan III) (1861–1868)

Prince Carlos, Duke of Madrid (Carlos VII) (1868–1909)

Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Dates indicate reigns, not lifetimes:

Jean (1964–2000)

Henri (2000–2025)

Guillaume V (2025–present)

Other significant Bourbon titles

Dukes of Bourbon, Montpensier, Vendôme, Anjou, Kings of the Two Sicilies, Dukes of Parma, Dukes of Orléans, Princes of Orléans and Braganza

Princes of Condé

Princes of Conti

Surnames used

Officially, the King of France had no family name. A prince with the rank of fils de France (Son of France) is surnamed "de France"; all the male-line descendants of each fils de France, however, took his main title (whether an appanage or a courtesy title) as their family or last name. However, when Louis XVI was put on trial and later "guillotined" (executed) by the revolutionaries National Convention in France in 1793, they somewhat contemptuously referred to him in written documents and spoken address as "Citizen Louis Capet" as if a "commoner" (referring back to the Medieval origins of the Bourbon Dynasty's name and referring to Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty).

Members of the House of Bourbon-Condé and its cadet branches, which never ascended to the throne, used the surname "de Bourbon" until their extinction in 1830.

The daughters of Gaston, Duke of Orléans, were the first members of the House of Bourbon since the accession of Henry IV to take their surname from the appanage of their father (d'Orléans). Gaston died without a male heir; his titles reverted to the crown. It was given to his nephew, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIV, whose descendants still bear the surname.

When Philippe, grandson of Louis XIV, became King of Spain as Philip V, he gave up his French titles. As a Son of France, his actual surname was "de France". However, since that surname was not heritable for descendants of rank lower than Son of France, and since Philippe had already given up his French titles, his descendants simply took the name of their royal house as their surname ("de Bourbon", rendered in Spanish as "de Borbón").

The children of Philippe's brother, Charles, Duke of Berry (all of whom died in infancy), were given the surname "d'Alençon". He was Duke of Berry only in name, so the surname of his children was taken from his first substantial duchy.

The children of Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, brother of Louis XVI, were surnamed "d'Artois". When Charles succeeded to the throne as Charles X, his son Louis Antoine became a Son of France, with the corresponding change in surname. His grandson, Henri d'Artois, being merely a Grandson of France, would use the surname until his death.

The three dynasties of Bourbon

The first were the lords of Bourbon, who died out by the males in 1171, then by the women in 1216. Their coat of arms are: D'or au lion de gueules, et à l'orle de huit coquilles d'azur Nicolas Louis Achaintre, Genealogical and chronological history of the royal house of Bourbon, vol. 1, éd. Didot, 1825, p. 45.

The second family formed by the marriage of the last descendant of the first family, Mathilde of Bourbon with Guy II of Dampierre, this land passed to the house of Dampierre in 1196. The coat of arms of this family is: "De gueules à deux léopards d'or, avec couronne de baron", but they took the coat of arms of the previous ones. The son of Guy de Dampierre and Mahaut de Bourbon, Archambaud VIII, took the name and arms of his mother, "de Bourbon", the House of Bourbon-Dampierre. By the marriage of, Agnes of Dampierre (died around 1287), with John of Burgundy, this important lordship passed to their daughter Béatrice de Bourgogne (1257–1310), lady of Bourbon, then to her husband Robert, Count of Clermont (1256–1317), and penultimate child of Saint Louis, thus possessing the land of Bourbon by "the right of the woman (de iure uxoris).

The third house of Bourbon acceded to the throne of Navarre in 1555, then to the throne of France in 1589 by Henri IV. His coat of arms are: "D'azur, fleurs-de-lys d'or sans nombre, l'écu brisé d'un bâton ou cotice de gueules, brochant sur le tout, avec couronne de fils de France. The name House of Bourbon was then used to describe the entire House of France, officially since 29 June 1768, date of death of Hélène de Courtenay (1689–1768), with which was extinguished the Capetian House of Courtenay, extinction which made the House of France the only branch dynasty resulting from the dukes of Bourbon.

First House of Bourbon

The Lords of Bourbon, 9th century until 1196.

Second House of Bourbon (Bourbon-Dampierre)

Prince of Bourbon since 1196:

Mathilde (Mahaut), Lady of Bourbon († 1218), granddaughter of Archambault VII, Lord of Bourbon, married Guy II of Dampierre, Marshall of Champagne († 1216)

Archambaud VIII the Great, Lord of Bourbon († 1242)

Archambaud IX the Young, Lord of Bourbon († 1249), married Yolande of Châtillon, Countess of Nevers, Auxerre and Tonnerre

Mahaut II, Lady of Bourbon († 1262) married Eudes of Burgundy († 1266)

Capetian House of Burgundy

Agnès, Countess of Nevers, Auxerre and Tonnerre († 1288) married John of Burgundy, Lord of Charolais († 1268)

Beatrix of Burgundy married Robert, Count of Clermont

Third and current House of Bourbon

Princes and Dukes of Bourbon from 1327 to 1830:

|→ Beatrice of Burgundy, Lady of Bourbon

x Robert de France (1256–1317), Count of Clermont (son of Louis IX of France (1215–1270) and of Marguerite de Provence)

├─>Louis (1280–1342), Duke of Bourbon

│ X Marie d'Avesnes (1280–1354)

│ │

│ ├─>Pierre (1311–1356), Duke of Bourbon

│ │ X Isabella of Valois (1313–1383)

│ │ │

│ │ ├─>Jeanne (1338–1378)

│ │ │ x Charles V of France

│ │ │

│ │ ├─>Louis II (1337–1410), Duke of Bourbon

│ │ │ X Anne of Auvergne (1358–1417), Comtess de Forez

│ │ │ │

│ │ │ ├─>Jean (1381–1434), Duke of Bourbon

│ │ │ │ X Marie, Duchess of Auvergne (1367–1434)

│ │ │ │ │

│ │ │ │ ├─>Charles (1401–1456), Duke de Bourbon

│ │ │ │ │ X Agnes of Burgundy, Duchess of Bourbon (1407–1476)

Family trees

Simplified family trees showing the relationships between the Bourbons and the other branches of the Royal House of France.

Descent from Henry IV

see also:Family tree of Spanish monarchs