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Interesting it might be, Henry Tudor's first royal ancestor (as in son/daughter of a king) was ... a french woman, Catherine de Valois, married 1st to Henry V king of England and 2nd to his grand-father Owen Tudor.
The first english king that appears in his ascendance is Edward III, his great-grand-father's grand-father.
http://roglo.eu/roglo?lang=pt&m=A&i=5468953&sosab=10&t=N&bd=0&color=&evt=on&v=8
His claim was indeed extremely feeble and came through the women.
But he won the war and that's what counted .
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While Henry VII’s claim to the throne was legally tenuous and thin, he did have extensive royal heritage. I did a six part series on my blog about the Royal ancestry of Henry VII and he had considerable amounts of Royal blood coursing through his veins. Here is the concluding post to my blog post....you can find the others in the series on my blog if you like.
https://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/royal-ancestry-of-king-henry-vii-of-england-conclusion/ Previous Message
Yes, I mentioned Napoléon's brothers; but I forgot about the Bernadottes and Murats. Points well taken: they really underscore the importance of associations and connections, in furthering oneself in life.
But in the end, there is nothing like genealogical ties to established dynasties, which all these native, upstart, or *conquest* royals sought. It's what Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England, had to do by forging an alliance with Elizabeth of York, to strengthen his claim on the throne. It had been exclusively through conquest (just like that of William of Normandy). He had defeated his Yorkist rival, King Richard III, on the battlefield and proclaimed himself king (it certainly helped that all his other rivals had previously killed each other off in the War of the Roses). Evidently, the other nobles accepted him as such: possession, then, is nine-tenths of the law -- but not 100%.
For genealogically speaking, he had virtually no claim on the throne, since he descended from the Plantagenets through an illegitimate line of the house of Lancaster (and moreover, through a female).
How these parvenu dynasties fare afterward, however, depend on chance, circumstance, fate, politics, and a host of other factors. The Bonapartes eventually got deposed, like the French Bourbons (both the Légitimists and the offshoot Orléanists); so did the Murats. But the Bernadottes have survived remarkably, and even spread their wings (their descendants reign also in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Luxembourg). Previous Message
Bonaparte :
You mentioned Napoléon. You could have added his brothers: Joseph, who became King of Naples and later, of Spain,
Louis, who was king of Holland and
Jerôme, king of Westfalia.
Bernadotte:
Another blue-bloodless Maréchal de l'Empire, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was adopted by the old childless king Charles XIII; his descendants still reign in Sweden.
Murat :
Joachim Murat, Prince of the Empire, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves and King of Naples
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