Cadet Branch - Notable Cadet Branches

Notable Cadet Branches

• House of York; descendants of the fourth son of Edward III Plantagenet, King of England, who, in the course of the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), displaced the agnatically senior line of Plantagenets, the Lancaster branch, on the English throne (1461), only to be finally displaced themselves by a Lancastrian cognatic descendant, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who obtained the crown by conquest from Richard III (August 1485). As Henry VII, he took as queen consort the heiress of the cadet branch, Elizabeth of York, in January 1486. Their son, Henry VIII, thus united in his person and on the throne of England both branches of the Plantagenets, while inaugurating the House of Tudor which would rule England until 1603.
• House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg; descendants of a younger son of King Christian III of Denmark (of the House of Oldenburg), who eventually became monarchs of Denmark, Norway and Greece and of which Charles, Prince of Wales, is patrilineally a member.

• House of Bourbon; descendants of a younger son of Louis IX of France who, in the person of Henry IV of France inherited the throne of France from the senior Capetian line of the Valois in 1589; and from which sprang the Bourbon kings of Spain (including the Carlist and French legitimist lines), the kings of the Two Sicilies, and the sovereign Dukes of Parma, who currently reign in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in a cadet line. Also from Louis XIII de Bourbon descends the cadet branch known as the House of Orléans, to which the Citizen-king Louis-Philippe, the Orleanist claimants to the throne of France (Henri, comte de Paris, duc de France) belong, as does the House of Orleans-Braganza.

• House of Guise; Although the Dukes of Lorraine exercised continental independence, nominally they were vassals of the Holy Roman Emperors and their geo-political importance resided less in the size of their realm than in their crucial location between the competing French and German nations. A younger brother of Duke Antoine, Claude of Lorraine, was appanaged with the lordship of Guise in France and betook himself to the French court in search of his fortune. There, he was granted the title Duke of Guise as a member of the Peerage of France, he and his male-line descendants henceforth being accorded the rank of prince étranger. As the Protestant Reformation threatened the unity of France the conspicuous loyalty of Claude's descendants to the Roman Catholic Church, combined with their barely concealed ambition upon the throne of the last Valois kings, infused the Guises with unequalled power in French politics. Their role in Paris and France's wars extended their influence in European affairs, until the accession of the House of Bourbon to the throne in 1593, far beyond that of their senior cousins reigning in Nancy.

• Spencer; the comital branch of the Spencer family descended from John Spencer, the youngest son of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and Lady Anne Churchill. The couple's eldest son Robert, inherited his father's title of Earl of Sunderland while their second son Charles, inherited the title of Duke of Marlborough upon the death of his aunt Henrietta. When Robert, 4th Earl of Sunderland died without an heir, his titles passed to his brother Charles, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, with it the Marlboroughs (later known as the Spencer-Churchills) became the senior branch of the Spencer family. John's only son, also named John, became the 1st Earl Spencer. From the line of the Earls Spencer descend many prominent figures, including Diana, Princess of Wales, whose son Prince William, Duke of Cambridge was born heir eventual to the Crown of the United Kingdom.

• Wellington; Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of Richard Wellesley, the 2nd Earl of Mornington, started his career as a protégé of his older brother. He entered the military, a traditional occupation of younger sons. From 1809 to 1814 he won a series of very significant victories, and was awarded a series of ascending titles; Baron Douro, Viscount Wellington, Earl of Wellington, Marquess of Wellington and, finally, Duke of Wellington. A descendant of Baron Cowley, youngest brother of Richard Wellesley, became Earl of Cowley in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, his junior line of the family thereby also achieving a higher status than that of the Earldom of Mornington in the Peerage of Ireland.