The Dutch royal family owes its name to a small principality in southern France
The House of Orange-Nassau led the Dutch revolt against Spain, supplied the Dutch Republic with several stadtholders, put a prince on the English throne in 1689, and has reigned as the Netherlands' monarchy since 1815. Its famous name came from a French principality inherited through a single will.
The family began as the Counts of Nassau, based at a German castle founded around 1100. A younger branch settled in the Low Countries when Engelbert I married the Dutch noblewoman Johanna van Polanen in 1403, gaining the Barony of Breda. In 1515 Henry III of Nassau-Breda married Claudia of Chalon-Orange, and their son René inherited the sovereign Principality of Orange from his uncle in 1530. When René died in battle at 25 in 1544, he left everything to his cousin William, who took the name Orange-Nassau.
That cousin, William the Silent, became the figurehead of Dutch resistance. Charles V had governed the Netherlands with some moderation, but Philip II persecuted Protestants and raised heavy taxes. The Eighty Years' War began in 1568, and the capture of the port of Brielle by rebels in 1572 swung Holland's cities behind William. Philip had him assassinated in 1584. His son Maurits proved a gifted general and won much of today's Dutch territory, though he crushed his political rival Johan van Oldebarnevelt in a judicial killing.
Marriage was a deliberate strategy, much of it engineered by Amalia van Solms-Braunfels, wife of Frederick Henry. Daughters married into houses such as the Hohenzollerns, and her son William II wed Mary, daughter of Charles I of England. After William II died of smallpox in 1650, days before his son's birth, the Republic's regents left the governorship empty. The boy, William III, was raised as a child of state, but a French and English invasion in 1672 brought him to power.
William III married his cousin Mary Stuart, deposed his Catholic father-in-law James II in 1688, and was crowned with her in April 1689, becoming one of Europe's mightiest rulers. He died childless after a riding accident in 1702, ending the main male line. In the Second World War, Queen Wilhelmina, living in exile in London, became a symbol of Dutch resistance.
Source: House of Orange-Nassau
