Gilbert was the first person, after a number of divisions of Auvergne in the Middle Ages, to carry the bloodlines of the respective dynasties of each of the three main divisions of Auvergne, the countship, the dukedom and the dauphinate.
His paternal grandmother Marie of Berry, Duchess of Bourbon, was heiress to the duchy of Auvergne. The creation for the Berry and Bourbon branches was made of lands that were confiscated from the count of Auvergne by Philip II of France. His paternal great-grandmother Anne of Auvergne was daughter of the Dauphin of Auvergne and after the extinction of her brother's line, in her issue the heiress thereof. Though Gilbert was by no means the primogenitural heir to any of them, as head of the cadet branch of his family, he received Montpensier and the dauphinate as appanages inside the extended family.[citation needed]