Prince of Ligne
title of Belgian nobility
Prince of Ligne is a title of Belgian nobility that belongs to the House of Ligne, which goes back to the eleventh century. It owes its name to the village in which it originated, between Ath and Tournai. The lords of Ligne belonged to the entourage of the Count of Hainaut at the time of the Crusades.
The Ligne family began a progressive rise in the nobility, first as barons in the twelfth century, then counts of Fauquemberg and princes of Épinoy in the sixteenth century. Lamoral I received the titles of Prince of Ligne and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in the early seventeenth century from Emperor Rudolf II. The Princes of Ligne are also Grandees of Spain, but this dignity is held personally rather than in conjunction with the title.
Barons de Ligne
Comtes de Ligne (1545–1601)
Princes de Ligne (1601–present)
Knights of the Golden Fleece
Many of the Princes de Ligne have also been knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
“Prince of Ligne” enters the record as title of Belgian nobility. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prince, Ligne and title can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3922015. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1545 and 1601.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prince of Ligne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.