House of Lorraine

The House of Lorraine, the main and now only remaining line known as Habsburg-Lorraine, was one of the most important and longest-reigning royal houses in the history of Europe. Its senior agnates are the Dukes of Hohenberg, although the house is currently headed by Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, the titular Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Croatia, Illyria, as well as the titular King of Jerusalem.

Ancestry

House of Ardennes–Metz

The house claims descent from Gerard I of Paris (Count of Paris) (died 779) whose immediate descendants are known as the Girardides. The Matfridings of the 10th century are thought to have been a branch of the family; at the turn of the 10th century they were Counts of Metz and ruled a set of lordships in Alsace and Lorraine. The Renaissance dukes of Lorraine tended to arrogate to themselves claims to Carolingian ancestry, as illustrated by Alexandre Dumas, père in the novel La Dame de Monsoreau (1846); in fact, so little documentation survives on the early generations that the reconstruction of a family tree for progenitors of the House of Alsace involves a good deal of guesswork.