House of Bourbon
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Country France, Navarre, Spain, Luxembourg
Ancestral house Capetian Dynasty
Titles
- King of France
- King of Navarre
- King of Spain
- Duke of Orléans
- Duke of Vendôme
- Duke of Bourbon
- Duke of Parma
- King of the Two Sicilies
- Grand Duke of Luxembourg
- Duke of Seville
Founder Count Robert of Clermont
Final sovereign
Current head
Henry VII of Orléans (1999-)
Duke Carlo of Castro (2008-)
Founding 1272
Deposition
Ethnicity French, Spanish
Cadet branches
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty. Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma. Spain and Luxembourg currently have Bourbon monarchs.
Bourbon monarchs ruled Navarre (from 1555) and France (from 1589) until the 1792 overthrow of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Restored briefly in 1814 and definitively in 1815 after the fall of the First French Empire, the senior line of the Bourbons was finally overthrown in the July Revolution of 1830. A cadet branch, the House of Orléans, then ruled for 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was overthrown. The Princes of Condé (Bourbon-Condé) were a cadet branch of the Bourbon-Vendômes and, in turn, were senior to the Princes of Conti (Bourbon-Conti). Both these lines became extinct in the early nineteenth century.
Philip V of Spain was the first Bourbon ruler of Spain, from 1700. The Spanish Bourbons (in Spain the name is spelled Borbón and rendered into English as Borbon) have been overthrown and restored several times, reigning 1700–1808, 1813–1868, 1875–1931, and 1975 to the present day. From this Spanish line comes the royal line of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1734–1806 and 1815–1860, and Sicily only in 1806–1816), the Bourbon-Sicilies family, and the Bourbon rulers of the Duchy of Parma.
Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg married a cadet of the Bourbon-Parma line, and thus her successors, who have ruled Luxembourg since her abdication in 1964, have also technically been members of the House of Bourbon. Isabel, Princess Imperial, the declared heiress and thrice-regent of the now-defunct Empire of Brazil married twenty years before their deposition Gaston, comte d'Eu a prince of Orléans, and their descent, known as the Orléans-Braganza, would have ascended that throne, had the empire not ended in 1889.
Origins
Kingdom of France
Structure
Parlements
French nobility
Taille
Gabelle
Seigneurial system
The House of Bourbon was originally a noble family, dating at least from the beginning of the 13th century, when the estate of Bourbon was ruled by a Lord who was a vassal of the King of France.
The Capetian House of Bourbon
In 1268, Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of King Louis IX of France, married Beatrix of Bourbon, heiress to the lordship of Bourbon. 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 lead a life of exile, his title was discontinued after his death.
However the junior line of La Marche-Vendôme remained, the ruling house of the Dukedom of Vendôme. The Bourbon-Vendôme branch were to become rulers of the Kingdom of Navarre on the northern side of the Pyrenees in 1555 and then of France, with Henry III of Navarre becoming Henry IV of France
France
The rise of Henry IV
grandchildren
grandchildren