Timeline of Kings and Queens, page 21
Eventually, a large part of Navarre became part of the Kingdom of Spain, but a small section, north of the Pyrenees, survived as an independent kingdom until 1620, when it was fully incorporated into France.
The Netherlands
Before the Napoleonic wars, the state of the Netherlands was a confederated republic, most of the semi-independent provinces being led by stadtholders from the powerful House of Orange-Nassau. Most of these eventually came into the possession of Burgundy and then the Austro-Spanish Empire, until revolution ousted Philip II and the United Provinces came into existence.
When Napoleon Bonaparte installed his brother Louis as king of Holland, in 1806, the Netherlands became nothing more than a puppet state. However, that particular monarchy lasted only until 1810.
Three years later, when the French had gone, the Dutch monarchy, as it exists today, was founded. The Prince of Orange was declared sovereign prince of The United Netherlands (made up of a number of northern provinces), and the new monarchy was confirmed by the 1815 Congress of Vienna, which reorganized Europe at the end of the Napoleonic wars. The House of Orange-Nassau was given rule over the Netherlands, as it exists today, plus Belgium; it would be called the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The king of the Netherlands was also given the title of grand duke of Luxembourg. William I was descended directly from John the Elder, younger brother of William of Orange, who had spearheaded the Dutch fight for independence from the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries. The ‘Orange’ part of the title came from William’s 1544 inheritance of the principality of Orange, in southern France.
Dutch monarchs are in the habit of abdicating. Queen Wilhelmina (1962) and Queen Juliana (1980) both abdicated in favour of their daughters. However, the current monarch, Queen Beatrix, has stipulated that she has no intention of abdicating in the near future in favour of her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, as she says he and his wife need to spend as much time as possible with their family.
Norway
Norway was a more or less united country by the time that Harald Fairhair came to the throne in the 9th century. His descendants ruled until 1319.
In 1387 Norway and Denmark were united with Sweden, in the Scandinavian Kalmar Union. Norway would share a sovereign with Denmark for 400 years.
In 1814 the Swedish king was installed as king of Norway. By 1905, the House of Oldenburg was back on the throne that it occupies to this day.
Poland
In the 10th century Poland was a major European power and a kingdom was created, with Boleslav I as its first king.
In 1370 the crown passed to the Angevins and then to a Lithuanian dynasty. Poland was a vast kingdom, stretching from the Baltic in the west to the Ukraine in the east. This continued until the fall of the Jagiellon family in 1572, when Sigismund II August died childless, despite three marriages, and Henri of Valois, brother of Charles IX of France, was elected King Henry III of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania.
The Swedish Vasa family were on the throne in the early 17th century, a time when the crown was elective and powerful. However, by the 18th century it was declining in power.
In 1795 the country was split between Austria, Russia and Prussia, and Napoleon established a grand duchy, which was overrun by the Russians in 1813. Until 1918, when the country became independent as a republic, the Russian tsars styled themselves kings of Poland.
Portugal
It was not until the 11th century that Portugal emerged as a kingdom. Under French control, through the ruling Burgundian House of Capet, it drove southwards, pushing the Moors out of the country.
By the 16th century it was a global power, founding fantastically lucrative colonies in India and Brazil. However, in 1580 the Spanish Habsburgs gained the throne, remaining there until the Braganzas in 1640. The House of Braganza occupied the throne until the abolition of the monarchy in 1910. A republic was declared the following year.
Prussia
Prussia was once the single most powerful part of the German Empire. It had become a duchy during the Reformation, when the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights had become a Lutheran and seized power as duke of Prussia. The territory of Brandenburg was added in 1618, and in 1701 it became a kingdom, with Frederick I of the House of Hohenzollern as the first king. Prussia disappeared into the German Empire in 1871.
Romania
Romania is something of an ethnic curiosity. The people living there can, in all likelihood, claim Roman ancestry, as is evidenced by the country’s name. However, by the late 1200s the inhabitants of the Wallachian state that occupied this land were of mixed origins. The rulers or governors of Wallachia and Moldavia, which was joined to it in the 1300s, were called Voivodes. Like most other Balkan states, Wallachia and Moldavia became vassal states of the all-conquering Ottoman Turks in the 16th century.
In 1862, following the merging of Wallachia and Moldavia three years earlier, the newly created larger state became the Principality of Romania. Alexander John Cuza became prince of Romania, or, to give the role its local name, ‘domnitor’. The Romanian parliament deposed Cuza in 1866, inviting a German prince of the Hohenzollern family, Carol, to become prince of Romania. At the 1878 Conference of Berlin, Romania achieved complete independence from the Ottomans, becoming a sovereign kingdom in 1881, with Carol promoted to king as Carol I.
Romania enjoyed a constitutional monarchy, apart from the years 1938 to 1944 under the dictatorships of Carol II and Marshal Ion Antonescu. In August 1944 King Michael, during his second reign, restored the 1923 Constitution, but actually reigned as an unconstitutional monarch, suspending parliament until 1946.
The Soviet Union occupied Romania in 1947, announcing the abolition of the monarchy.
In 2008 King Michael of Romania announced his return to Romania, to live in the castle of Peles, near Bucharest, 60 years after the communists forced him to abdicate.
Russia
Slavic tribes are the ancestors of modern Russians, moving into lands vacated by migrating Germanic tribes.
From the 9th to the 12th centuries, the ruler of the state of Kievan Rus’, centred around the city of Kiev, was called grand prince. The dynasty began with a semi-legendary Varangian (Viking) called Rurik; his dynasty would rule Kievan Rus’ and Russia for the next 700 years. The Scandinavians merged, before long, into the indigenous population and helped to make Kievan Rus’ the richest state in Europe by the 11th and 12th centuries.
However, after centuries of invasions by Mongols and others, and internecine fighting between princely families, the area’s power had waned, and Kiev was finally destroyed in 1237.
The area of Galicia-Volhynia was eventually absorbed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and the independent Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, became the basis for the modern Russian nation.
The Grand Duchy of Moscow became the most powerful state after the decline of Kievan Rus’. It annexed rival states, such as Novgorod and Tver. Ivan III the Great threw off the control of the Mongol invaders, consolidating the territory around Moscow, and became the first to style himself ‘Grand Duke of all the Russias’.
In 1547 Ivan the Terrible became the first tsar of Russia, annexing the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, along the Volga river, making Russia a multi-ethnic state. By the mid 17th century there were Russian settlements in eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur river and on the Pacific coast.
Peter I, of the Romanov dynasty, founded the Russian Empire in the 17th century, but the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought the monarchy to an end, with the execution of Nicholas II and his family, and the introduction of Soviet Russia.
Sardinia
In 1720 a kingdom was created by the Treaty of London consisting of Sardinia, Nice, Savoy and Piedmont and, after the Napoleonic wars, Liguria. When, in 1859, Lombardy, the Two Sicilies, the Papal States and the Central Duchies were appended, the Kingdom of Italy came into existence.
Vittorio-Emanuele, king of Sardinia, became the first king of Italy in 1861.
Saxony
Conquered by Charlemagne, this region of Germany obtained the imperial crown in the 10th century, becoming an electorate in 1423. In 1485 it was split between two branches of the Wettin family. Then in 1547 it was reunited, and became a kingdom in 1806, which lasted until the end of the First World War in 1918.
Scotland
Like Ireland, the history of Scotland is shrouded in myth and legend. The Picts lived in the northern part of the country and Celts occupied the south. Irish, Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons completed the mix.
The country’s inhabitants provided fierce resistance to the Romans, who failed to conquer Caledonia, the area north of the Antonine Wall, stretching from the River Clyde to the River Forth. In fact, Roman occupation of any significant part of the country was limited to about only 40 years.
Pictland developed in response to the Roman threat, and this would become the Kingdom of Alba during the reign of King Constantine II. By 1018 Malcolm II had pushed the border of Scotland to roughly its present-day position. The gradual addition of the Kingdom of Strathclyde expanded the country until, by the end of the 13th century, it had assumed its present shape.
The name ‘Scotland’ derives from the Latin ‘Scoti’, the name given to the Gaels, an ethno-linguistic group originating in Ireland and subsequently spreading to Scotland and the Isle of Man. The Latin ‘Scotia’ referred, initially, to Ireland. By the 11th century ‘Scotia’ was being used to describe the land north of the River Forth, but ‘Albania’ and ‘Albany’ were also being used, both from the Gaelic ‘Alba’. It was not until the late Middle Ages that ‘Scots’ and ‘Scotland’ became common currency for the land and its people.
Scotland became a kingdom in 843, when Kenneth, king of Dalriada, of the House of Alpin, became king of the Picts, and the first of the dynasty that would create Alba and rule until 1034. The Houses of Dunkeld and Moray ruled the country before several interregnums and the reign of John Balliol, which punctuated an unsettled period in the Scottish monarchy. The House of Bruce preceded the House of Stewart, which ruled Scotland for 336 years, between 1371 and 1707.
The crown of Scotland was merged with the English crown following the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England.
Serbia
Serbia was established as a kingdom before 1200, by the powerful ruling Nemanjich family who had ousted the Byzantines and who remained in power until 1389 when the Ottoman Turks conquered the country.
In 1804 Czerny George, founder of the Serbian House of Karađorđević, drove the Turks out, and when they returned eight years later they were again expelled, this time by Milosh Obrenovitch, who became prince of Serbia in 1817.
Following the First World War, Serbia merged with other countries to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, with the Serbian king, Peter I, being elected king.
Sicily
Having been ruled in ancient times by Carthage and Greece, early in the 9th century, the Muslims seized control from the Byzantines. Next, the powerful Norman Hauteville family moved in, and by 1130 King Roger was in control of not only Sicily but all of southern Italy.
The year 1194 saw the Hohenstauffens gain control, but they lost it to the French Angevins. A rebellion in 1282 introduced Aragonese rule, and they also acquired the Kingdom of Naples. Both kingdoms passed into the hands of the Habsburgs and then to the Spanish Bourbons.
Sicily was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, and the last king, Francis II, died in exile in Austria.
Spain
The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and the conquest of Granada at the end of the 15th century, unified the entire country of Spain, apart from Navarre, for the first time.
The House of Trastamarsa reigned until the arrival on the throne of the Habsburgs in 1504. They remained there until 1700, when the House of Bourbon came to power.
With only the interruptions of Napoleon and dictator General Francisco Franco, they have occupied the throne ever since.
Sweden
The Roman historian Tacitus makes the first mention of a Swedish king – the king of the Suiones – in his work Germania, written around ad100. There is little recorded about the rulers of the country, however, until around the 10th century, when lists of Swedish kings traditionally begin, around the time of the reign of King Olof Skötkonung, of the house known variously as the House of Munsö, the Old dynasty or the House of Uppsala. Olof Skötkonung united the Swedes with the Goths and introduced Christianity. Before this date, history is embellished with saga and mythology and cannot be relied upon.
The ruling Skoldung family was replaced by the Folkungs in the 13th century, and Sweden joined Denmark and Norway in the Kalmar Union from 1397 until 1523.
Breaking with the Union in 1523, Sweden elected Gustav I, of the Vasa family, to the throne, and during his reign Sweden became a powerful country. The Wittelsbachs succeeded them, but by the time the House of Oldenburg took the throne in 1751, Sweden was a weakened and bankrupt country.
Remarkably, in 1818, the former French military commander, Marshal Count Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who had been ‘adopted’ at the age of 47 by the previous king, Charles XIII, became king as Charles XIV. The Bernadotte family have occupied the Swedish throne ever since.
Wales
By the time of the complete withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, around 436, a number of Welsh principalities had been formed. These were briefly united by Rhodri in the 9th century, but he was killed by the Angles in 878. Although the Normans never really conquered the country, it was eventually joined to England in 1542.
Westphalia
Westphalia was another kingdom created by Napoleon Bonaparte, of which he made a member of his family monarch. He did so in 1807, when it comprised nearly all of Hesse-Cassel, all of Brunswick and large parts of Prussia, Hanover and Saxony.
Westphalia ceased to exist after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.
Württemberg
Having been ruled by the same family for more than 700 years, Württemberg became a kingdom in December 1805.
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia was created after the First World War, out of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Its first king was the colourful Peter I, who was the son of Alexander, prince of Serbia. He had lived in exile since 1858, had joined the French army in 1870, and fought the Turks under the name of Mrkonjic.
Having been king of the Serbs since 1903, he was elected king of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918.
The third and last king of Yugoslavia, Peter II, was exiled when Marshal Tito came to power in 1945, and the country became a dictatorship.
Glossary of Royal Terms
Absolute monarchy
A system of monarchy where the monarch has total power over the land and people he or she rules, including the apparatus of government, aristocracy and, often, the clergy.
Aetheling
Anglo-Saxon title for the heir apparent, the heir to the throne. In the middle ages, this was replaced by the title Prince of Wales.
Agnatic descent
(also known as patrilineal) is where descent is traced exclusively through males from a founding male ancestor. Agnatic seniority, or patrilineal seniority, ensures that succession to the throne passes to the monarch’s next-eldest brother (even if the monarch has his own sons), and then only to the monarch’s children (the next generation) after males of the eldest generation have all been exhausted. Females of the dynasty and their descendants are excluded from the succession.
Antipope
A person in opposition to the true pope, who makes a claim to be pope.
Apostolic king
A hereditary title of the king of Hungary, reputedly given to Saint Stephen by Pope Sylvester II.
Appanage
Derived from the Late Latin term for ‘giving bread’, appanage was the term used for the giving of an estate and titles to the non-heirs of a sovereign prince. It was widely used throughout Europe.
Boyar
A term used, from the 10th until the 17th century, to describe a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Russian, Bulgarian, Wallachian and Moldavian aristocracies, who were second only to the rulers.
Bretwalda
An Anglo-Saxon term used, from the 5th century onwards, to describe Anglo-Saxon kings who had achieved overlordship over the other kingdoms.
Consanguinity
Being descended from the same person, a factor that is considered when deciding whether two people should marry – important in royal families when monarchs often married cousins.
Constitutional monarchy
A type of constitutional government in which a monarch is head of state and his or her government legislates. Most constitutional monarchies (such as the United Kingdom) utilize a parliamentary system of government.
Crown prince
The heir to the throne in a monarchy.
Dauphin
The title given to the king’s eldest son, the heir apparent to the French throne.
De facto
Latin term meaning ‘in practice’, but not stipulated by law.
