House of Luxembourg
The House of Luxembourg (luxembourgish: D'Lëtzebuerger Haus; ; ) or Luxembourg dynasty was a royal family of the Holy Roman Empire in the Late Middle Ages, whose members between 1308 and 1437 ruled as kings of Germany and Holy Roman emperors as well as kings of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. Their rule was twice interrupted by the rival House of Wittelsbach. History. This royal Luxembourg dynasty were not direct descendants of the original counts of Luxembourg, but descended instead from their relatives, a cadet branch of the Lotharingian ducal House of Limburg-Arlon. In 1247 Henry, younger son of  Duke Waleran III of Limburg inherited the County of Luxembourg, becoming Count Henry V of Luxembourg, upon the death of his mother Countess Ermesinde. Her father, Count Henry "the blind", was count of Namur, through his father, and Luxembourg, through his mother, who was also named Ermesinde. This elder Ermesinde was a member of the original House of Luxembourg, which was a branch of the House of Ardenne, and had ruled the county since the late 10th century. Henry V's grandson Henry VII, Count of Luxembourg upon the death of his father Henry VI at the 1288 Battle of  Worringen, was elected "Rex Romanorum" in 1308. The election was necessary after the Habsburg king Albert I of Germany had been murdered, and Henry, backed by his brother Archbishop-Elector Baldwin of Trier, prevailed against Charles, Count of Valois. Henry arranged the marriage of his son John with the Přemyslid heiress Elisabeth of Bohemia in 1310, through whom the House of Luxembourg acquired the Kingdom of Bohemia, enabling that family to compete more effectively for power with the Habsburg and Wittelsbach dynasties. One year after being crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Rome, Henry VII, still on campaign in Italy, died  in 1313. The prince-electors, perturbed by the rise of the Luxembourgs, disregarded the claims raised by Henry's heir King John, and the rule over the Empire was assumed by the Wittelsbach duke Louis of Bavaria. John instead concentrated on securing his rule in Bohemia and gradually vassalized the Piast dukes of adjacent Silesia from 1327 until 1335. His son Charles IV, in 1346 mounted the Imperial throne. His Golden Bull of 1356 served as a constitution of the Empire for centuries. Charles not only acquired the duchies of Brabant and Limburg in the west, but also the former  March of Lusatia and even the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1373 under the Kingdom of Bohemia. The family's decline began under Charles' son King Wenceslaus, deposed by the prince-electors in 1400 who chose the Wittelsbach Elector Palatine Rupert. In 1410 rule was assumed by Wenceslaus' brother Sigismund, who once again stabilized the rule of the Luxembourgs and even contributed to end the Western Schism in 1417; however, with his death in 1437, the senior branch of the dynasty became extinct. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, the Habsburg archduke Albert V of Austria. The Habsburgs finally  prevailed as Luxembourg heirs, ruling the Empire until the extinction of their senior branch upon the death of Maria Theresa in 1780. Genealogy. House of Limburg–Arlon. Having succeeded to the county of Luxemburg, the younger branch of the House of Limburg-Arlon is the family that succeeded in getting one of its scions elected Holy Roman Emperor. From there descended the Kings of Bohemia, several other Emperors and a King of Hungary as shown below. Early Luxembourg counts. The House of Luxemburg stemmed from the House of Ardenne (or Ardennes, French "Maison d'Ardenne") which was an important medieval noble  family from Lotharingia, known from at least the tenth century. They had several important branches, descended from several brothers: Two houses descended from the women of the counts of Luxembourg, the counts of Loon and the Counts of Grandpré, which wear a shield barry. Both families had a place in relation to the succession of the House of Ardennes. Indeed, the count of Grandpré was the next heir of Conrad II of Luxembourg, the last representative of the Ardennes dynasty, but Emperor Frederick Barbarossa preferred that Luxembourg was held by a lord Germanic rather than French and attributed the county  to Henry, son of Conrad's aunt Ermesinde and Count Godfrey I of Namur. The counts of Loon were also in position to claim the inheritance Luxembourg, albeit weaker position: