The Duchy of Burgundy emerged in the 9th century as one of the successors of the ancient Kingdom of the Burgundians, which after its conquest in 532 had formed a constituent part of the Frankish Empire. Upon the 9thcentury partitions, the French remnants of the Burgundian kingdom were reduced to a ducal rank by King Robert II of France in 1004. Robert II's son and heir, King Henry I of France, inherited the duchy but ceded it to his younger brother Robert in 1032. Other portions had passed to the Imperial Kingdom of Arles and the County of Burgundy .

Robert became the ancestor of the ducal House of Burgundy, a cadet branch of the royal Capet dynasty, ruling over a territory that roughly conformed to the borders and territories of the modern region of Burgundy . Upon the extinction of the Burgundian male line with the death of Duke Philip I in 1361, the duchy reverted to King John II of France and the royal House of Valois. The Burgundian duchy was absorbed in a larger territorial complex after 1363, when King John II ceded the duchy to his younger son Philip. With his marriage with Countess Margaret III of Flanders, he laid the foundation for a Burgundian State which expanded further north in the Low Countries collectively known as the Burgundian Netherlands. Upon further acquisitions of the County of Burgundy, Holland and Luxemburg, the House of ValoisBurgundy came into possession of numerous French and imperial fiefs stretching from the western Alps to the North Sea, in some ways reminiscent of the Middle Frankish realm of Lotharingia.