Concept
The House of Bourbon (ˈbʊərbən, also UKˈbɔrbɒn; buʁbɔ̃) is a dynasty that originated in the Kingdom of France and is a branch of the Capetian dynasty, the royal House of France. Bourbon kings first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century, and by the 18th century, members of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma. Today Spain and Luxembourg have monarchs of the House of Bourbon. The royal Bourbons originated in 1272, when Robert, the youngest son of King Louis IX of France, married the heiress of the lordship of Bourbon. The house continued for three centuries as a cadet branch, serving as nobles under the direct Capetian and Valois kings. The senior line of the House of Bourbon became extinct in the male line in 1527 with the death of Duke Charles III of Bourbon. This made the junior Bourbon-Vendôme branch the genealogically senior branch of the House of Bourbon. In 1589, at the death of Henry III of France, the House of Valois became extinct in the male line. Under the Salic law, the head of the House of Bourbon, as the senior representative of the senior-surviving branch of the Capetian dynasty, became King of France as Henry IV. Bourbon monarchs then united to France the part of the Kingdom of Navarre north of the Pyrenees, which Henry's father had acquired by marriage in 1555, ruling both 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 Bourbon branch, the House of Orléans, then ruled for 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was overthrown. The princes of Condé was a cadet branch of the Bourbons descended from an uncle of Henry IV, and the princes of Conti was a cadet line of the Condé branch. Both houses, recognised as princes of the blood, were prominent French noble families, well known for their participation in French affairs, even during exile in the French Revolution, until their respective extinctions in 1830 and 1814.
