Dynasties

(Quoting Bruce Gordon, "I", with some spelling corrections for this entire page)

Despite the name, this page is concerned more with territories than with people. What follows is a listing of the more significant dynastic families existing in Europe, together with the various titles they accumulated over the course of their existence. Neither the catalog of families, nor the holdings so listed, should be considered complete; this is an ongoing work, and it is to be anticipated that the information will be modified and added to.

The format is as follows: An entry will begin with a dynasty name. It will be tinted (black) for extinct families, (terra cotta) for families which still exist but no longer rule, or (red) for families which still hold active rulership of some state or states.

Inset after are listings of holdings that family controlled at one time or another. They are presented in German Imperial precedence, ie. Emperor, King, Archduke, Grand Duke, Duke, Prince, Margrave, Landgrave, Count. A line will consist of a title and location, followed by the number of family members holding that title at any time, followed by the years in which the family had effective control of the region. If both males and females held the title in their own right, that is indicated, and the number following will be in the form (M/F). Certain titles will have the notation (var.), followed usually by an extraordinarily large number of holders; these indicate regions which were divided and subdivided among most male members of the family, to produce very large numbers of very small domains.

Note well: These listings are about titles and lands, not individuals. One person may very well hold simultaneously any number of lands and titles; therefore do not add up the numbers in a particular dynasty and conclude that that family had X number of rulers, you will almost certainly be duplicating individuals having more than one title.

Also, be aware that I am using "dynasty" in a very extended sense; I include under the same family name all the various branches stemming from a common ancestor which contained rulers. Thus "Plantagenet" includes within it the branches of York and Lancaster, which are sometimes thought of elsewhere as separate dynasties.

[NB, Burton]: That - for no good reason other than I hadn't heard of 1/3+ of these names - while doing the transition to a modern HTML page, I added links to the Encyclopædia Britannica. If I didn't find a quiick hit, I moved on. It added a little learning to an otherwise boring, mechanical task.

 

Color Coding

  • THIS IS A "DYNASTY"
  • DYNASTY exists but no longer rules
  • DYNASTY exists and actively rules (somewhere)

"Dynasties"

Scratch Pad

When I was building this page, I used what follows as a kind of "scratch pad", to help the process of organizing the information above. When the page became publishable, these notes become irrelevant, but upon reflection I have decided to retain them anyway, since the information herein may perhaps prove useful in and of itself. Here, therefore, is a listing of the sovereign and semi-sovereign states which have existed or continue to exist in Europe, since the days of the Roman Empire. Republics and republican eras are ignored. As is the case with the section above, this is definitely NOT complete.

Entries consist of the name of a State, the number of individuals holding that title (irrespective of dynastic affiliation), and the dates within which that state existed. States are grouped by seniority of title, but the order of precedence is the more general Europen one rather than the German Imperial used above; thus, Principalities rank immediately after Kingdoms.

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