The first counts of Rethel ruled independently, before the county passed first to the Counts of Nevers, then to the Counts of Flanders, and finally to the Dukes of Burgundy.
In 1357, by marrying the future Countess Margaret III of Flanders, then heiress of Flanders, he was promised the counties of Flanders, Nevers, Rethel, and Antwerp, and the duchies of Brabant, and Limburg.
Rethel | Counts and Dukes of Rethel | Counts and dukes of Rethel |
In the 1870s Napier began styling himself as the Prince of Mantua and Montferrat with subsidiary titles as prince of Ferrera, Nevers, Rethel, and Alençon; Baron de Tobago; and master of Lennox, Kilmahew, and Merchiston.
Mary (1609–1660); married 1627 Charles II of Gonzaga (1609–1631), Duke of Rethel en Nevers
Because his younger brother Baldwin was in the Holy Land, where he served as King of Jerusalem, he was succeeded as ruler of Rethel by his sister Matilda and her husband Odo of Vitry.
A cadet branch of the Mantua Gonzagas became Dukes of Nevers and Rethel in France when Luigi (Louis) di Gonzaga, a younger son of Duke Federico II and Margherita Paleologa, married the heiress.
The main line of the House of Dampierre, originally only counts of Flanders, had through a clever marriage policy managed to inherit the counties of Nevers (1280) and Rethel (1328).
Margaret I, Countess of Burgundy (1310–1382), daughter of Philip V, Countess Palatine of Burgundy, Countess of Artois, countess-consort of Flanders, Nevers & Rethel
She died in Miranda de Ebro in 1655, her daughter Duchess Maria of Rethel and Montferrat surviving her, with two grandchildren, of whom the daughter Eleanor had in 1651 become the Holy Roman Empress and the son Charles in 1637 the reigning duke of Mantua.
Marie was born in the Chateau de Cuffy, France on 25 March 1491, the eldest child of Jean d'Albret, Sire of Orval, Governor of Champagne (died 10 May 1524), and Charlotte of Nevers, Countess of Rethel (1472- 23 August 1500).
He was the son of another Richard de Camville (died 1176), an Anglo-Norman landowner, and Millicent de Rethel, a kinswoman (second cousin) of Adeliza of Louvain, the second wife of King Henry I.