The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ( ; ) is a European royal house. It takes its name from its oldest domain, the Ernestine duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, its members later sat on the thrones of Belgium, Bulgaria, Portugal, India, and the United Kingdom and its dominions. Founded in 1826 by Ernest Anton, the sixth duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, it is a cadet branch of the Saxon House of Wettin. One agnatic branch currently reigns in Belgiumthe descendants of Leopold Iand another reigned until the death of Elizabeth II in the United Kingdomthe descendants of Albert, Prince Consort. In 1917, the First World War caused the British king George V to officially change the name from "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to "Windsor" in the United Kingdom. In Belgium, due to similar resentment against Germany after the Great War, the use of name was also changed in 1920 by King Albert I to "de Belgique" (French), "van België" (Dutch) or "von Belgien" (German), meaning "of Belgium". However, the "Saxe-Coburg" house name of the Belgian royal family was never officially abolished, and since relations between Belgium and Germany have been normalized for a long time, the use of this family name has been slowly reintroduced since the 2010s (especially since King Philippe of Belgium wants to limit the number of princes and princesses of Belgium, and thus the use of the designation "of Belgium", to only a select group of his family). History The first duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was Ernest I, who reigned from 1826 until his death in 1844. He had previously been Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (as Ernest III) from 1806 until the duchy was reorganized in 1826. Ernest's younger brother Leopold became King of the Belgians in 1831, and his descendants continue to serve as Belgian monarchs. Leopold's only daughter, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, was the consort of Maximilian I of Mexico, and she was known as Empress Carlota of Mexico in the 1860s. Ernest I's second son, Prince Albert (1819–1861), married his first cousin Queen Victoria in 1840 (Victoria's mother was a sister of Ernest I). Prince Albert thus is the progenitor of the United Kingdom's current royal family, called the House of Windsor since 1917. In 1826, a cadet branch of the house inherited the Hungarian princely estate of the Koháry family and converted to Roman Catholicism. Its members managed to marry a queen regnant of Portugal,