Cadet branch is a term in genealogy to describe the lineage of the descendants of the younger sons (cadets) of a monarch or patriarch. In the ruling dynasties and noble families of much of Europe and Asia, the family's major assets – titles, realms, fiefs, property and income – have historically been passed from a father to his firstborn son in what is known as primogeniture: Younger sons – cadets – inherited less wealth and authority to pass to future generations of descendants.
In families and cultures in which this was not the custom or law, as in feudal Germany, equal distribution of the family's holdings among descendants was eventually apt to so fragment the inheritance as to render it too small to sustain the descendants at the socio-economic level of their forefather. Moreover, brothers and their descendants sometimes quarreled over their allocations, or even became estranged. While masculine primogeniture became a common way of keeping the family's wealth intact and reducing familial disputes, it did so at the expense of younger sons and their descendants. Both before and after adoption of inheritance by primogeniture, younger brothers sometimes vied with older brothers to be chosen their father's heir or, after the choice was made, sought to usurp the elder's birthright.
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In the parts of Europe where primogeniture prevailed, cadet sons were generally entitled to receive an appanage in patrimony, always substantially smaller than the eldest son's inheritance. Often, especially outside of Germany, the younger branch remained subordinate to the elder line as vassals or subjects.
Often, however, one or more younger sons was encouraged to take clerical orders, thereby forfeiting all rights of inheritance. Or a junior male might be encouraged to pursue a career in the military as an officer, or as a courtier or civil servant in the monarch's capital.
In such cases, primary responsibility for promoting the family's prestige, aggrandizement, and fortune fell upon the senior branch for future generations. A cadet, having less means, was not expected to reproduce a family. If a cadet chose to raise a family, its members were expected to maintain the family's social status by avoiding derogation, but could pursue endeavors that might be considered demeaning for the senior branch, such as immigration to another sovereign's realm, or engagement in commerce, or a profession (such as law), academia, or civil service.
In some cases, cadet branches eventually inherited the throne of the senior line, e.g. the House of Savoy-Carignan in the Duchy of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sardinia; and the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken in the Electorates of the Palatinate and Bavaria. In other cases, a junior branch came to eclipse more senior lines in rank and power, e.g. the Kings of Prussia and German Emperors who were junior by primogeniture to the Counts and Princes of Hohenzollern, and the Electors and Kings of Saxony who were a younger branch of the House of Wettin than the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar.
By contrast, it was also sometimes possible for cadet branches to sink in status, either due to diminished fortune or genealogical distance from the monarch. Such was the case of the Capetian branch of the princes de Courtenay, the last male of which died in 1730 without ever having been recognized by the French crown as princes du sang despite their undisputed but remote male-line descent from Louis VI of France. Likewise, the line of the principi di Ottajano, an extant branch of the House of Medici who were eligible to inherit the grand duchy of Tuscany when the last male of the senior branch died in 1737, but for intervention of Europe's major powers which allocated the sovereignty of Florence elsewhere. Although the Romanovs mounted Russia's throne in 1613 due to kinship-by-marriage to a tsar (Ivan the Terrible) descended from the 9th century founding ruler Rurik, when in 1880 Tsar Alexander II wed Catherine Dolgorukov, a Rurikid princess, the marriage and its progeny were deemed morganatic.