Duke of Luxembourg

The territory of Luxembourg has been ruled successively by counts, dukes and grand dukes. It was part of the medieval Kingdom of Germany, and later the Holy Roman Empire until it became a sovereign state in 1815.

Counts of Luxembourg

House of Ardenne–Luxembourg

House of Luxembourg–Namur

House of Hohenstaufen

House of Luxembourg–Namur

House of Luxembourg–Limburg

Dukes of Luxembourg

In 1354, the county was elevated to a duchy.

House of Luxembourg-Limburg

As Elisabeth had no surviving children, she sold Luxembourg to Philip III, Duke of Burgundy in 1441, but only to succeed upon her death. Philip captured the city of Luxembourg in 1443, but did not assume the ducal title because of conflicting claims by Anne of Austria, the closest Luxembourg relative.

Claimants

House of Valois-Burgundy

In 1467, when Elisabeth II of Austria, last rival claimant to the title, renounced her rights, Philip III's son, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the title of duke of Luxembourg, making it a subsidiary title of the Duke of Burgundy.

House of Habsburg

In 1482, Luxembourg passed to the House of Habsburg. After the abdication of Emperor Charles V, the duchy of Luxembourg fell to the Spanish line of the House of Habsburg.

During the War of Spanish Succession, 1701–1714, the duchy was disputed between Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, of the House of Bourbon; and Charles of Austria, son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, of the House of Habsburg. In 1712, Luxembourg and Namur were ceded to Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria by his French allies, but at the end of the war in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht Maximilian Emanuel was restored as Elector of Bavaria. In 1713, the duchy fell to the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg.

House of Bourbon

House of Wittelsbach

House of Habsburg

Luxembourg was occupied by French revolutionaries between 1794 and 1813. At the Vienna Congress, it was elevated to a grand duchy and given in personal union to William I of the Netherlands.

Grand Dukes of Luxembourg

The Grand Duke of Luxembourg (or Grand Duchess in the case of a female monarch) is the head of state of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is the world's only extant sovereign grand duchy, a status to which Luxembourg was promoted in 1815 upon its unification with the Netherlands under the House of Orange-Nassau.

The Luxembourg constitution defines the grand duke's position:

Originally, the constitution vested the grand duke with considerable executive power. In practice, however, since the end of the personal union with the Netherlands in 1890, he has usually limited himself to a mostly representative role, acting on the advice of the government. Amendments in 1919 significantly curbed the grand duke's powers, thus codifying two decades of constitutional practice.

House of Orange-Nassau

House of Nassau-Weilburg

Under the 1783 Nassau Family Pact, those territories of the Nassau family in the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the Pact (Luxembourg and Nassau) were bound by semi-Salic law, which allowed inheritance by females or through the female line only upon extinction of male members of the dynasty. When William III died leaving only his daughter Wilhelmina as an heir, the crown of the Netherlands, not being bound by the family pact, passed to Wilhelmina. However, the crown of Luxembourg passed to a male of another branch of the House of Nassau: Adolphe, the dispossessed Duke of Nassau and head of the branch of Nassau-Weilburg.

In 1905, Grand Duke Adolphe's younger half-brother, Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau, died, having left a son Georg Nikolaus, Count von Merenberg who was, however, the product of a morganatic marriage, and therefore not legally a member of the House of Nassau. In 1907, Adolphe's only son, William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, obtained passage of a law confirming the right of his eldest daughter, Marie-Adélaïde, to succeed to the throne in virtue of the absence of any remaining dynastic males of the House of Nassau, as originally stipulated in the Nassau Family Pact. She became the grand duchy's first reigning female monarch upon her father's death in 1912, and upon her own abdication in 1919, was succeeded by her younger sister Charlotte, who married Felix of Bourbon-Parma, a prince of the former Duchy of Parma. Charlotte's descendants have since reigned as the continued dynasty of ''Nassau''.

Timeline of Grand Dukes of Luxembourg since 1815

ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:12
PlotArea = top:10 bottom:50 right:130 left:20
AlignBars = late

DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy
Period = from:15/03/1815 till:01/01/2024
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1820

Colors =
id:orange value:rgb(1,0.75,0.5) legend:Orange-Nassau
id:nassau value:rgb(0.8,0.8,0.9999) legend:Nassau-Weilburg

Legend = columns:2 left:50 top:24 columnwidth:150

BarData =
barset:PM

PlotData =
width:5 align:left fontsize:S shift:(5,-4) anchor:till
barset:PM

from: 15/03/1815 till: 07/10/1840 color:orange text:" Guillaume I" fontsize:10
from: 07/10/1840 till: 17/03/1849 color:orange text:" Guillaume II" fontsize:10
from: 17/03/1849 till: 23/11/1890 color:orange text:" Guillaume III" fontsize:10
from: 23/11/1890 till: 17/11/1905 color:nassau text:"Adolphe" fontsize:10
from: 17/11/1905 till: 25/02/1912 color:nassau text:" Guillaume IV" fontsize:10
from: 25/02/1912 till: 14/01/1919 color:nassau text:" Marie-Adélaïde" fontsize:10
from: 14/01/1919 till: 12/11/1964 color:nassau text:" Charlotte" fontsize:10
from: 12/11/1964 till: 07/10/2000 color:nassau text:"Jean" fontsize:10
from: 07/10/2000 till: end color:nassau text:" Henri" fontsize:10

See also

* Coat of arms of Luxembourg
* Duchy of Luxembourg
* Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg
* History of Luxembourg
* Line of succession to the throne of Luxembourg
* List of consorts of Luxembourg
* List of prime ministers of Luxembourg

Footnotes

References

*
*

External links

History of titles of the counts and dukes of Luxembourg based on contemporary documents (before 1467)


* ttp://eurulers.altervista.org/luxembourg3.html History of titles of the grand dukes of Luxembourg based on contemporary documents (since 1814)

{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Monarchs Of Luxembourg
Monarchs of Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Monarchs
Duchy of Luxembourg
House of Ardennes
Luxembourg

fr:Liste des comtes et ducs de Luxembourg