In history and heraldry, a cadet branch consists of the male-line descendants of a

monarch or patriarch's younger sons (cadets). In the ruling dynasties and noble
families of much of Europe and Asia, the family's major assets—realm, titles,
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 the feudal
Holy Roman Empire, equal distribution of the family's holdings among male members
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 agnatic 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 a state legal default 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.
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 Grand Dukes of
Saxe-Weimar.

A still more junior branch of the Wettins, headed by the rulers of the small Duchy
of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, would, through diplomacy or marriage in the 19th and 20th
centuries, obtain or consort and sire the royal crowns of, successively, Belgium,
Portugal, Bulgaria and the Commonwealth realms. Also, marriage to cadet males of
the Houses of Oldenburg (Holstein-Gottorp), Polignac, and Bourbon-Parma brought
those dynasties patrilineally to the thrones of Russia, Monaco, and Luxembourg,
respectively. The Dutch royal house has, at different times, been a cadet branch of
Mecklenburg and Lippe(-Biesterfeld). In the Commonwealth realms, Prince Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh, and his male-line descendants are cadet members of the House of
Glücksburg.

It was a risk that cadet branches maintaining legal heirs could sink in status.
This could be due to shrunken wealth too meagre to survive shifting political
upheavals (e.g. legal mechanisms in factionalism or revolution of attainder,
capital offences and show trials) as much as unpopularity or distance from the
reigning line.

The Capetian branch of the princes de Courtenay's last 'prince'