French Monarchs Family Tree | Charlemagne to Napoleon III

today I'm going to show you the family tree of French monarchs starting with Charlemagne and going all the way down to Napoleon the third so in total we'll be looking at over 1100 years of French history I'll be using my European royal family tree west chart which can be purchased as a poster from my website useful charts calm as you can see this chart starts with Charlemagne at the very top this is because he was the first emperor in Western Europe since the fall of Rome and he is connected to every single European royal house that came after him most importantly he is generally considered to be the first person in the long list of French monarchs as well as the first person in the long list of Holy Roman emperors that is why he is shown with two coats of arms this one representing France and this one representing the Holy Roman Empire but at the time that Charlemagne came to the throne there was no France and there was no Holy Roman Empire there was simply the kingdom of the Franks Charlemagne was a franc and he belonged to a dynasty known as the Carolinians named after his grandfather Charles Martel but the Carolinians had only recently rose to power before them there was actually another dynasty known as the Merovingians who were the first to unite and rule the franks this coming Friday I'll be releasing a separate video covering the family tree of the Merovingian dynasty as part of a multi-channel collaboration called Project Clovis so keep an eye out for that but for now let's start with Charlemagne [Music] so Charlemagne succeeded his father Pepin in the Year 768 over the next few decades he greatly expanded the Frankish territory conquering the Saxons and Bavarians to the east as well as the lombards to the south in Italy meanwhile over in Constantinople a female had become Roman Emperor for the first time that was Irene of Athens this put Charlemagne in an interesting position he controlled Rome he controlled most of Western Europe and of course he was male therefore in the year 800 the Pope decided to make a bold move he crowned Charlemagne Emperor signaling that Charlemagne was now the true heir of Augustus Caesar not Irene the idea was that the Emperor ship would permanently transfer from Constantinople back to Rome but in reality what happened was that Europe ended up once again with two emperors initially the plan was for Charlemagne to divide his realm into three parts one for each of his three main sons but only the youngest son outlived him and therefore that son became Emperor Louis the first you'll notice that a lot of French monarchs will be named Louie so take note that this lily is the original one when he died the empire was finally divided into three parts the eldest son received the title of Emperor as well as the territory of middle Frankia which included Italy the other two surviving sons received West Frankia and East Frankia respectively West Frankia basically corresponding with France and East Frankia basically corresponding with Germany but since we're only concerned with France in this video we're just going to follow the West Frankie aside which is shown in blue so that side starts with Charles the bald who by the way wasn't bald supposedly he was actually quite hairy so the nickname was actually more of a joke he ended up becoming Emperor because middle Frankia ran out of male heirs after just one generation but when he died the emperor ship didn't simply pass to his son only the title of West Frankia did the Emperor ship went to a relative over in East Frankia known as Charles the fat so in west Frankia we get louis ii who didn't train very long followed by his two sons Louis the third and carlomon the second but when carlomon ii died his younger brother charles was too young to take the throne so Charles the fat ended up becoming king of West Frankia as well as Emperor over in East Frankia this would be the last time that all of Frankia was united under a single ruler but by this point the nobility in Western Europe had grown very powerful so powerful that they eventually had Charles the fat deposed and decided to elect new Kings instead over in West Frankia they elected a king from a totally new dynasty the Roberge in dynasty that individual became King odo but when king odo died the throne went back to the Carolinians because by this time Charles the third known as Charles the simple was old enough to rule but things would continue to go back and forth for a while because during this period the monarchy was basically elective so Charles the simple was eventually replaced with Odo's brother Robert and then when Robert died his son-in-law Rudolf became king now when Rudolf died King Robert's son Hugh was in a good position to become king but instead of taking the crown for himself he instead chose to support the son of Charles the simple who became Louie the fourth this way Hugh was able to obtain the safer position of being the power behind the throne he even married the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the great in order to cement his position but eventually the Roberson's would become kings again two generations after Louis the fourth there were no longer any Carolinians left and therefore the nobles elected Hugh the Great's son also named you as king he was nicknamed Capay and therefore he and his descendants became known as the house of Capay and the house of Capay went on to rule France for the next eight hundred years that's a record when it comes to European dynasties but note that the house of Capay is actually a branch of the earlier Roberge and dynasty so really their rule goes back even further Hugh was followed by his son Robert the second and then by his son Henry the first note that Henry the First's younger brother Robert became the progenitor of the ducal house of Burgundy a junior branch of the café's who went on to rule in Portugal for 244 years in France they continued to get several nice father-son successions with each King having a nice long reign which certainly helped to solidify the dynasty's hold on power the next person I want to talk about is Louis the seventh he was one of the first kings to participate in one of the Crusades at that time he was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine one of the most important women in European history their marriage was later annulled and she then married King Henry ii of england which led to England's involvement on the continent and the creation of the Angevin Empire but please note that up until this point everyone that I have talked about so far wasn't really a king of France technically up to and including Louis the seventh they were kings of West Frankia but this changed with philip ii he was the first to use the title King of France he also managed to recapture much of the territory that had been under the control of the Angevin Kings from England in fact during Philips reign his son the future King Louis the 8th was briefly declared King of England he was later known as Louis the lion he was the father of Louis the ninth also known as st. Louis being the only French King to be granted sainthood he is the namesake of the u.s. city st. Louis his younger brother Charles also became a king not of France but of Sicily in southern Italy his descendants became known as the house of Anjou and that branch of the Capay dynasty would go on to rule in Hungary as well if you want to check out that branch it's shown on my European royal family tree north east chart st. Louie was followed by his son Philip the 3rd Philip the 3rd had a younger brother named Robert who married Beatrice the Lady of Borbon their son became the 1st Duke of Borbon and it is from him that the later House of Boardman would descend Phillip the 3rd was followed by Philip the 4th he married the Queen regnant of Navarre and therefore when she died their son Louis became king of Navarre so these next four kings of France were all kings of Navarre as well but this is where the four hundred plus years of simple father-son successions came to an end Louis the 10th died young leaving his son John who was born five months later as King but King John lived only five days and hence his uncle Philip became king but then Philip died without any heirs and his brother Charles also died without any errors this created a crisis because France followed salic law which meant that only a male could be the ruling monarch but there was some debate over whether that male had to come from a strict male only line or whether a male from a female branch could be allowed you can see that these French Kings here had a sister named Isabella who married the King of England they had a son who became King Edward the third who was not only a descendant of the previous English kings but also the closest male descendant of Philip the fourth of France so after Charles the fourth died Edward claimed to be the legitimate King of France however there was another candidate Philip the fourth had had a brother who had a son who was the closest relative who came from a strict male only line that individual was Philip the sixth from the branch of the house of Capay that became known as the House of Valois the conflict between these two contenders over who was the rightful king of France is what started the Hundred Years War between France and England and this is why from this point on the English kings included the fleur-de-lis symbol on their coat of arms they did that all the way up to the Year 1801 following the French Revolution anyhow the Hundred Years War actually lasted a hundred and sixteen years and in the end France led by the House of Valois won thanks in part to a famous woman known as Joan of Arc by that time Charles the seventh was king he was followed by louis xi and charles the eighth charles the eighth came to the throne when he was just 13 and then he died in his 20s without any sons brothers or even uncles to replace him so at that point the throne jumped to another branch of the Valois dynasty and Louis the twelfth became King he had been married to Charles's sister Joan but when Louis became King he had that marriage annulled and he married Charles's widow instead who happened to be the Duchess regnant of Brittany by this point France was engaged in the Italian Wars which was basically a rivalry between the House of Valois and the House of Habsburg soon after he became King Louis the 12th captured the prosperous Italian city of Milan and he added to his titles the title Duke of Milan based on the fact that his grandmother the wife of this person here was the daughter of the first Duke of Milan he was able to hold on to Milan for about thirteen years until the Italians captured it back unfortunately for him he did not have any sons he even tried with the sister of Henry the eighth but he was not successful and therefore the throne passed through the son of his first cousin that person became Francis the first and ended up being the main rival of the great Habsburg Emperor Charles the fifth during the continuing Italian Wars it was during the reign of Francis the first that the French explorer Jacques Cartier landed in Canada and claimed the area for France naming it new France he therefore sometimes considered to be the first Canadian monarch even though Canada didn't actually exist then and of course at that point was entirely populated by independent First Nations groups you'll notice that Francis married the daughter of the previous king who by that point was Duchess regnant of Brittany because of this marriage the next king of France also became the Duke of Brittany officially making Brittany a part of France and thus ending its previous independence that King was henry ii and he married a member of the powerful medici family three of their sons would go on to be kings of france and would become the last three Valois kings francis ii was actually the first husband of mary queen of scots but he died when he was just 16 had he lived a long life with mary and produced heirs history might have gone in a very different direction instead his brother Charles the ninth became King and France descended into a civil war known as the French Wars of Religion fought between Catholics and Protestants while that was going on the third of these three brothers was elected king of the Poland Lithuanian Commonwealth but shortly after he became King there Charles the ninth died and Henry had to return to France to become King giving up his Polish crown in the process but like I said there was a civil war going on and after a fifteen year reign Henry the third became the first French King to be assassinated he also ended up being the last King from the House of Valois at this point the throne passed to the House of Bourbon which as I mentioned earlier was a junior branch of the house of Capay so the next King Henry the fourth was still a direct mail line descendant of Hugh Capay his mother had been the Queen regnant of Navarre so before he became king of France he had actually already been King the king of Navarre so at this point when he became King of France lower Navarre basically merged with France but the most important thing to note about Henry the fourth was that he was originally Protestant which was obviously a problem in the minds of many French people at that time being a strongly Catholic country and even though he converted to Catholicism there were a lot of assassination attempts made on him one of those attempts ended up being successful and therefore he was succeeded by his son louis xiii initially he under the Regency of his mother the second of the two medici queens of France it was under the rule of louis xiii and his prime minister cardinal richelieu that france became an absolute monarchy something that reached its peak during the reign of the next king who is probably the most famous of all the french kings louis xiv he is often referred to as the son king or simply as louis the great Louis had a very long reign in fact the longest reign of any European monarch in history and during that reign France became the most powerful Kingdom in Europe several wars were fought to curb his power including the war of the grand alliance in which basically every other major power teamed up against him he lived so long that he outlived both his son and his grandson and therefore when he died he was succeeded by his great grandson who became Louis the 15th know that his second most senior grandson became the king of Spain something that I go into more detail on in my Habsburg and Spain videos this is why the current Royal House of Spain is the house of Borbon they include the current king Philippe the sixths and are the direct male line descendants of the Sun King and hence are direct male line descendants of hyouka pay as well Louis the 15th became the second longest reigning French King but during his reign the stage was set for the French Revolution in which France decided it didn't want a king anymore this occurred during the reign of his grandson louis xvi and his Queen Marie Antoinette they were both beheaded and France became a republic they a son who is numbered Louis the 17th who died in captivity but as you probably know the first Republic of pants did not last long instead France became an empire under the reign of the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte who went on to conquer most of Europe but eventually Napoleon was defeated by the other European powers and France decided to restore the Borbon monarchy under the former king's brother who became louis xviii he then in turn was succeeded by a third brother Charles the tenth but then there was another revolution in France this time it did not result in a republic instead it resulted in a more liberal form of monarchy Charles was replaced with Louis Philippe the first who used the title king of the French instead of king of France he was from the house of Orlan which was a junior branch of the house of Borbon and hence a junior branch of the house of Capay as well but then in 1948 there was a third major revolution in France and a second republic was declared under the presidency of Napoleon's nephew eventually though the Republic became an empire again and the president became Napoleon the third Napoleon the second being the son of Napoleon the first who kinda reigned for two weeks but not really then came the franco-prussian war in 1870 which France lost and at that point France decided to become a republic for good and it has been a republic ever since so the last monarch of France was Napoleon the third but the last king was Louis Philippe the first if you want to find out who would be monarch today I've done a video about that which I'll link to in the description it's an older video which I hope to update later this year and remember to keep an eye out for this Friday's video which is going to go back before Charlemagne and look at the Merovingian dynasty once again if you want a copy of this poster you can head over to my website useful charts calm thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 133,456

Rating: 4.9471502 out of 5

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Id: fPR9BFmPKdU

Length: 22min 23sec (1343 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020