History UsefulNotes / HolyRomanEmpire

* The [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is pretty much an {{Expy}} of the Holy Roman Empire (right down to the German aesthetics) transplanted to a fantasy world, though it is worth noting that it's not exclusively based on the Holy Roman Empire. It's more like a mash-up of the Holy Roman Empire, the ByzantineEmpire, the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish Empire]], and the SovietUnion.

* VestigialEmpire: What the HRE ultimately became, especially towards the latter centuries of its existence. Two nominal remnants would come of of it: one the Habsburg Empire; the other, Liechtenstein, which still exists today.

* The [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is pretty much an {{Expy}} of the Holy Roman Empire (right down to the German aesthetics) transplanted to a fantasy world, though it is worth noting that it's not exclusively based on the Holy Roman Empire. It's more like a mash-up of the Holy Roman Empire, the ByzantineEmpire, the SpanishEmpire, and the SovietUnion.

* The [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is pretty much an {{Expy}} of the Holy Roman Empire (right down to the German aesthetics) transplanted to a fantasy world, though it is worth noting that it's not exclusively based on the Holy Roman Empire. It's more like a mash-up of the Holy Roman Empire, the [[ByzantineEmpire]], the [[SpanishEmpire]], and the [[SovietUnion]].

* The [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is pretty much an {{Expy}} of the Holy Roman Empire (right down to the German aesthetics) transplanted to a fantasy world, though it is worth noting that it's not exclusively based on the Holy Roman Empire. It's more like a mash-up of the Holy Roman Empire, the [[Byzantine Empire]], the [[Spanish Empire]], and the [[Soviet Union]].

* The Empire from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is pretty much an {{Expy}} of the Holy Roman Empire (right down to the German aesthetics) transplanted to a fantasy world.

Germany as a realm separate from the Frankish empire emerged with the Treaties of Verdun (843) and Mersen (870). After the last of Charlemagne's line died in 911, the German nobles elected Henry the Fowler, Duke of Saxony, as King of the Germans. The coronation of his son Otto in 962 may be taken as the actual foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. The actual term "Holy Roman Empire" began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later.

* TheKnightsTemplar: TheTeutonicKnights were also a crusading order like them and are nearly as famous in their own right. However, their ''Drang nach Osten'' ("Drive toward the East") was toward Eastern Europe instead of the Middle East, against Europe's last pagan peoples (which they kept doing long after those nations converted). They also rival the Holy Roman Empire in being "Germany before modern Germany." Some of the lands they conquered were considered German until WWII because of it (as referenced in Creator/TSEliot's ''The Waste Land'': ''Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch'').

* AssPull: The Pope crowned Charlemagne as emperor because there was a BindingAncientTreaty that allowed the Pope to crown a Roman emperor in the west. That BindingAncientTreaty was later found to be a forgery.
** Historians are still debating on the group responsible for forging the BindingAncientTreaty, as it was a very popular AssPull for those involved.

* Liechtenauer's ''Literature/{{Blossfechten}}'', non-fiction. It's likely that this manual in swordsmanship was the most influential across the Holy Roman Empire, as it spawned the numerous interpretations. The first known Italian swordsmanship manual dates to over one-hundred years later and bears striking similarity to Liechtenauer's works, meaning that the influence of the manuscript was felt outside the Empire itself.

** Despite the facility of Voltaire's canard, down to the end the Empire, even in its derivative Austro-Hungarian form, remained at least Holy, Roman (Catholic), and Imperial enough to be granted a say in the election of ThePope at Rome, as in 1903 when the Imperial veto against Cardinal Rampolla resulted in the election of Pope St. Pius X.

* ''TabletopGame/SeventhSea'' features the local [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Fantasy Counterpart Germany]] as the Petty Princedoms plus lots of GrimDark (the local ThirtyYearsWar was really devastating).

Despite its name, the empire had many traits of a confederation, with the German King (Emperor-elect) being elected by the most powerful regional lords, although it was only through the Golden Bull of 1356 that it was settled in a legally binding way who had the right to elect a king. From 1356 there were seven prince electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the margraves of Brandenburg and Meissen (Saxony), and the Count Palatine on the Rhine (''Pfalzgraf bei Rhein''). This more or less set the tone, but there were several changes over the centuries. For one, the Duke of Bavaria would sometimes conspire with the Count Palatine to get Bavaria in by excluding Bohemia on the grounds that he wasn't German--but only when the duke and the Count Palatine weren't squabbling about some family issue (both were Wittelsbachs). During the ThirtyYearsWar, the Bavarian Wittelsbachs got ahold of the Palatinate vote because the Bavarian line were Catholics and their Palatinate cousins were not; after the war concluded, the Palatinate branch got a shiny new Electorate to maintain balance between Protestants and Catholics among the electors. However, this new electorate passed to a third, Catholic branch of the Wittelsbachs, leading to the appointment of a new Protestant elector, the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (whose territory became known as the Electorate of Hannover from its capital city; members of this line would [[TheHouseOfHanover find greater success elsewhere]]), although as the Catholic Palatinate Wittelsbachs inherited Bavaria, as well, it turned out to be a moot point. Finally, Regensburg, Salzburg, Würzburg, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Kassel were all given electorates in the final years of the Holy Roman Empire to add to their stature (and in part to replace the four electorates that had been conquered by the French - Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and the Palatinate) however, this proved to be a moot point, as the Empire was dissolved a few years later.

In TheRenaissance, despite a brief flourishing under Charles V (the last ruler actually crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the [[ThePope Pope]]), the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion and ThirtyYearsWar effectively broke the Empire as a single political unit. Thereafter, the German states ruled themselves and were able to conclude international treaties as sovereign principalities, and the Habsburg emperors, though retaining the Imperial title, concentrated more and more to their Austrian dominions (which included Hungary, parts of Northern Italy and Southwest Germany, and, since the War of Spanish Succession, the Austrian Netherlands (most of what is now Belgium plus Luxembourg)). After the War of Austrian Succession, despite the flourishing of culture under rulers such as MariaTheresa of Austria, FrederickTheGreat of Prussia, and Augustus the Strong of Saxony, the empire was finished. When Emperor Francis II assumed the title of Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1804 and was forced by [[NapoleonBonaparte Napoleon]] to abdicate as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806, the changed reality was recognized and the Empire came to an end. Although some German nationalists dreamed of recreating it following Napoleon's defeat, all they got was the loose German Federation (''Deutscher Bund'', 1815-1866).

* ''The Last Valley'' -- A rare example set actually ''in'' the ThirtyYearsWar, after Dürer days but before the Petty Princedoms.

* ''Luther'' (2003 movie) -- Dürer

* The ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series dumps a small modern West Virginian town into the ThirtyYearsWar period, hovering indistinctly between Dürer and the Petty Princedom era.

* The old DOS roleplaying game [[VideoGame/Darklands Darklands]] was set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 1400s. While the game strives to be historically accurate, it also portrays medieval Europe as the inhabitants at the time believed it to be, meaning fantastic elements like demons, witches, and dragons are real.

* The old DOS roleplaying game {{Darklands}} was set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 1400s. While the game strives to be historically accurate, it also portrays medieval Europe as the inhabitants at the time believed it to be, meaning fantastic elements like demons, witches, and dragons are real.

The '''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]''' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') was traditionally founded on Christmas Day of the year 800 A.D., when [[ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of Charlemagne in St. Peter's, and the assembled multitudes shouted "''Carolo Augusto, a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria!''" -- "To Charles the Magnificent, crowned the great and peace-giving emperor by God, life and victory!" Strictly speaking, however, Charles's empire was neither Roman nor German, but Frankish -- or as we might say, a sort of French-German mix (for that matter, there was a perfectly valid [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens Roman Emperor]] at the time in any case[[note]]Or to be precise, ''empress''. Charlemagne's supporters [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Imperial_diplomacy]] claimed that a woman couldn't rule the Roman Empire. The Byzantines promptly deposed Irene and installed Nikephoros I, who was certainly a man; they were possibly disappointed that Charlemagne saw no reason to abdicate.[[/note]]). The Empire was not officially described as "Holy" until the twelfth century, nor officially "German" before the sixteenth. Charlemagne's empire quickly fell to pieces among his squabbling successors, and the Holy Roman Emperors themselves tended to ignore any discontinuity between [[TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[TheRomanRepublic 53 B.C.]]).[[note]]Never mind that the Parthians were Zoroastrian Persians and the rulers of the Middle East of the time were primarily Turkish and to a lesser extent Arab Muslims...[[/note]]

The '''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]''' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') was traditionally founded on Christmas Day of the year 800 A.D., when [[ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of Charlemagne in St. Peter's, and the assembled multitudes shouted "''Carolo Augusto, a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria!''" -- "To Charles the Magnificent, crowned the great and peace-giving emperor by God, life and victory!" Strictly speaking, however, Charles's empire was neither Roman nor German, but Frankish -- or as we might say, a sort of French-German mix (for that matter, there was a perfectly valid [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens Roman Emperor]] at the time in any case[[note]]Or to be precise, ''empress''. Charlemagne's supporters [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Imperial_diplomacy claimed that a woman couldn't rule the Roman Empire. The Byzantines promptly deposed Irene and installed Nikephoros I, who was certainly a man; they were possibly disappointed that Charlemagne saw no reason to abdicate.[[/note]]). The Empire was not officially described as "Holy" until the twelfth century, nor officially "German" before the sixteenth. Charlemagne's empire quickly fell to pieces among his squabbling successors, and the Holy Roman Emperors themselves tended to ignore any discontinuity between [[TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[TheRomanRepublic 53 B.C.]]).[[note]]Never mind that the Parthians were Zoroastrian Persians and the rulers of the Middle East of the time were primarily Turkish and to a lesser extent Arab Muslims...[[/note]]

Despite its name, the empire had many traits of a confederation, with the German King (Emperor-elect) being elected by the most powerful regional lords, although it was only through the Golden Bull of 1356 that it was settled in a legally binding way who had the right to elect a king. From 1356 there were seven prince electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the margraves of Brandenburg and Meissen (Saxony), and the Count Palatine on the Rhine (''Pfalzgraf bei Rhein''). This more or less set the tone, but there were several changes over the centuries. For one, the duke of Bavaria would sometimes conspire with the Count Palatine to get Bavaria in by excluding Bohemia on the grounds that he wasn't German--but only when the duke and the Count Palatine weren't squabbling about some family issue (both were Wittelsbachs). During the ThirtyYearsWar, the Bavarian Wittelsbachs got ahold of the Palatinate vote because the Bavarian line were Catholics and their Palatinate cousins were not; the Palatinate branch got a shiny new Electorate when the war concluded to maintain balance between Protestants and Catholics among the electors. However, this new electorate passed to a third, Catholic branch of the Wittelsbachs, leading to the appointment of a new Protestant elector, in Brunswick-Lüneburg (known as the Electorate of Hannover from its capital city; members of this line would [[TheHouseOfHanover find greater success elsewhere]]), although as the Catholic Palatinate Wittelsbachs inherited Bavaria, as well, it turned out to be a moot point. Finally, Regensburg, Salzburg, Würzburg, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Kassel were all given electorates in the final years of the Holy Roman Empire to add to their stature (and in part to replace the four electorates that had been conquered by the French - Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and the Palatinate) however, this proved to be a moot point, as the Empire was dissolved a few years later.

* TheHighQueen: MariaTheresa of Austria fits this trope perfectly, with a touch of TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask -- though she was devoted to her husband, the Emperor Francis I, his philandering made her bitterly unhappy; her son Joseph II's progressive policies troubled her deeply; and among her daughters was MarieAntoinette (although her execution took place after her mother's date, marital alliances with France always were a source of troubles).

The '''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]''' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') was traditionally founded on Christmas Day of the year 800 A.D., when [[ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of Charlemagne in St. Peter's, and the assembled multitudes shouted "''Carolo Augusto, a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria!''" -- "To Charles the Magnificent, crowned the great and peace-giving emperor by God, life and victory!" Strictly speaking, however, Charles's empire was neither Roman nor German, but Frankish -- or as we might say, a sort of French-German mix (for that matter, there was a perfectly valid [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens Roman Emperor]] at the time in any case[[hottip:*:Or to be precise, ''empress''. Charlemagne's supporters [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Imperial_diplomacy claimed that a woman couldn't rule the Roman Empire. The Byzantines promptly deposed Irene and installed Nikephoros I, who was certainly a man; they were possibly disappointed that Charlemagne saw no reason to abdicate.]]). The Empire was not officially described as "Holy" until the twelfth century, nor officially "German" before the sixteenth. Charlemagne's empire quickly fell to pieces among his squabbling successors, and the Holy Roman Emperors themselves tended to ignore any discontinuity between [[TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[TheRomanRepublic 53 B.C.]]).[[note]]Never mind that the Parthians were Zoroastrian Persians and the rulers of the Middle East of the time were primarily Turkish and to a lesser extent Arab Muslims...[[/note]]

At times, the empire consisted of over 300 sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities. In the late 18th century, there were nearly 1800, ranging from the kingdom of Bohemia to the nominally autonomous territories of ''Reichsritter'' (Imperial knights, i. e. knights subject only to the emperor) and even a handful of ''Reichsdörfer'' (Imperial villages). Unsurprisingly, it often was a total chaos.

Despite its name, the empire had many traits of a confederation, with the German King (Emperor-elect) being elected by the most powerful regional lords, although it was only through the Golden Bull of 1356 that it was settled in a legally binding way who had the right to elect a king. From 1356 there were seven prince electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the margraves of Brandenburg and Meissen (Saxony), and the Count Palatine on the Rhine (''Pfalzgraf bei Rhein''). This more or less set the tone, but there were several changes over the centuries. For one, the duke of Bavaria would sometimes conspire with the Count Palatine to exclude Bohemia on the grounds that he wasn't German--but only when the duke and the Count Palatine weren't squabbling about some family issue (both were Wittelsbachs). During the ThirtyYearsWar, the Bavarian Wittelsbachs got ahold of the Palatinate vote because the Bavarian line were Catholics and their Palatinate cousins were not; the Palatinate branch got a shiny new Electorate when the war concluded to maintain balance between Protestants and Catholics among the electors. However, this new electorate passed to a third, Catholic branch of the Wittelsbachs, leading to the appointment of a new Protestant elector, in Brunswick-Lüneburg (known as the Electorate of Hannover from its capital city; members of this line would [[TheHouseOfHanover find greater success elsewhere]]), although as the Catholic Palatinate Wittelsbachs inherited Bavaria, as well, it turned out to be a moot point. Finally, Regensburg, Salzburg, Würzburg, Württemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Kassel were all given electorates in the final years of the Holy Roman Empire to add to their stature (and in part to replace the four electorates that had been conquered by the French - Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and the Palatinate) however, this proved to be a moot point, as the Empire was dissolved a few years later.

The '''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]''' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') was traditionally founded on Christmas Day of the year 800 A.D., when [[ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of Charlemagne in St. Peter's, and the assembled multitudes shouted "''Carolo Augusto, a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria!''" -- "To Charles the Magnificent, crowned the great and peace-giving emperor by God, life and victory!" Strictly speaking, however, Charles's empire was neither Roman nor German, but Frankish -- or as we might say, a sort of French-German mix (for that matter, there was a perfectly valid [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_of_Athens Roman Emperor]] at the time in any case[[hottip:*:Or to be precise, ''empress''. Charlemagne's supporters [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Imperial_diplomacy claimed that a woman couldn't rule the Roman Empire. The Byzantines promptly deposed Irene and installed Nikephoros I, who was certainly a man; they were possibly disappointed that Charlemagne saw no reason to abdicate.]]). The Empire was not officially described as "Holy" until the twelfth century, nor officially "German" before the sixteenth. Charlemagne's empire quickly fell to pieces among his squabbling successors, and the Holy Roman Emperors themselves tended to ignore any discontinuity between [[TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[TheRomanRepublic 53 B.C.]]).

* ChristopherLee released a symphonic metal album entitled ''[[Music/{{Charlemagne}} Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross]]'', which dramatized the life or Charlemagne (whom Lee is a direct descendant of) in the form of a [[HeavyMithril Orchestral rock opera]] with Lee playing the role of the titular emperor. The upcoming follow-up, ''Charlemagne: the Omens of Death'', will be full-blown Music/HeavyMetal arranged by [[Music/JudasPriest Richie Faulkner.]]