The Royal Houses
Thirteen royal houses, twelve sovereign crowns, stand documented in the family's direct line, from fifth-century Leinster to Plantagenet England. They did not arrive together. Each came in by its own door, the de Clares and the de Veres, the Butlers, the O'Briens and the first wife of a King of Leinster, and nearly all of them through women's lines; Charlemagne is reached twice, by two different roads. Every rung is graded, and the two royal doors that failed inspection are kept on the site as failures, because they are what let the rest be believed. What is rare here, and what is not, is set out plainly at the front of this wing.
The royal lines at a glance
All thirteen royal houses, twelve sovereign crowns, on one page: who each ruler was, and the line by which each descends to the family.
The British Isles in detail
England, Scotland, Wales and the three Irish kingships, drawn generation by generation: Alfred and the Conqueror, Edward I, Kenneth MacAlpin, Rhodri Mawr, the two Leinster houses and Brian Boru.
The Continent in detail
Charlemagne and the Carolingians, Hugh Capet and the Kings of France, the Grand Princes of Kiev and the first christian King of Sweden, generation by generation to the de Veres.
Charlemagne to Margaret de Clare
The original single descent, rung by rung from the Emperor to the woman who defied a queen from Leeds Castle.
Chapter 24: The crown, honestly · Chapter 26: The houses of Europe · Earliest known ancestors