d'Auvergne

The Auvergne counts emerged in the later tenth century as Carolingian authority in Aquitaine faded, holding lands around Clermont and Riom hereditarily from about 980. Around 1155 William VIII the Old seized most of it from nephew William VII, splitting off the Auvergne dauphinate.

The main line kept the county, and Robert V inherited Boulogne on the Channel in the thirteenth century. In 1332 the inheritance fell to the child countess Joan I, who in 1350 married King John II as his second wife and became queen consort. On her 1360 death both lands passed briefly to her son Philip of Rouvres, duke of Burgundy, then to Joan's uncle John I and his descendants.

Last of the line, Mary I, died in 1437; her son Bertrand V of La Tour became the first La Tour d'Auvergne count, the duchy having gone to the Bourbons in 1434. On the La Tour line's failure in 1531, the county passed to Catherine de' Medici, then the royal domain.