Grandson

The lords of Grandson were a great noble house of the Vaud, named after their castle of Grandson on the Lake of Neuchâtel. Adalbert is styled prince of Grandson Castle in a charter of 1049; around 1130 the family founded the Abbey of Lac de Joux, its burial place.

Otto I de Grandson was a close friend of Edward I of England and fought in his wars. Having no children, Otto made his nephew Peter II his heir; Peter's marriage to Blanche of Savoy-Vaud in 1303 tied the house to the counts of Savoy.

Peter's grandson Oton III, who died in 1397, was a soldier and poet whose fame for chivalry spread through Europe. The senior Vaud line died out in the later fourteenth century and the Grandson-Pesmes branch in the early sixteenth, when Savoy confiscated the remaining lands.