by conquest from Richard III (August 1485). As Henry VII, he took as queen consort the heiress of the cadet branch, Elizabeth of York, in January 1486. Their son, Henry VIII, thus united in his person and on the throne of England both branches of the Plantagenets, while inaugurating the House of Tudor which ruled England until 1603. House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg: descendants of a younger son of King Christian III of Denmark (of the House of Oldenburg), who eventually became monarchs of Denmark, Norway and Greece. House of Bourbon: descendants of a younger son of Louis IX of France who, in the person of Henry IV of France inherited the throne of France from the senior Capetian line of the Valois in 1589; and from which sprang the Bourbon kings of Spain (including the Carlist and French legitimist lines), the kings of the Two Sicilies, and the sovereign Dukes of Parma, who currently reign in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in a cadet line. Also from Louis XIII de Bourbon descends the cadet branch known as the House of Orléans, to which the Citizen-king Louis-Philippe, the Orleanist claimants to the throne of France (Henri, comte de Paris, duc de France) belong, as does the House of Orleans-Braganza. House of Gonzaga: the noble family which reigned in Mantua counted in its dynasty some cadet branches. House of Guise: although the Dukes of Lorraine exercised continental independence, nominally they were vassals of the Holy Roman Emperors and their geo-political importance resided less in the size of their realm than in their crucial location between the competing French and German nations. A younger brother of Duke Antoine, Claude of Lorraine, was appanaged with the lordship of Guise in France and betook himself to the French court in search of his fortune. There, he was granted the title Duke of Guise as a member of the Peerage of France, he and his male-line descendants henceforth being accorded the rank of prince étranger. As the Calvinist form of Protestantism spread widely among the nobility and mercantile class of France, Claude's descendants embraced the Counter-Reformation and formed the Catholic League to prevent a Protestant monarch from inheriting or seizing the throne of the last Valois kings. Their leadership of the League infused the Guises with unequalled power in French politics. Their leadership role during the French Wars of Religion further extended their influence in European affairs,