History UsefulNotes / HolyRomanEmpire

In the early UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance, the Empire flourished briefly under Charles V, the last ruler actually crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]], and the Emperor with the most extensive empire: not only did he have a firmer grasp on power within the Empire than any other Emperor for generations, he also ruled Spain and its vast New World empire directly (ruling the first "empire on which the Sun never sets"), and held substantial influence in the Italian states, Portugal, and the British Isles (all of which either consisted of Imperial client states or were so firmly opposed to France that they may as well have been client states). However, the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion and UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa of Austria, UsefulNotes/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 [[UsefulNotes/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 Confederation (''Deutscher Bund'', 1815-1866).

* The Petty Princedom period features beautiful princesses stifled by the dull etiquette of a DeadlyDecadentCourt wondering which foreign prince they will be married off to, rebellious court musicians, and fountains running with wine at the conclusion of the Peace of [[BilingualBonus Pumpernickel-Knoblauch]].

** Germany in ''VI'' is led by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and has the [[UsefulNotes/TheHanseaticLeague Hansa]] as a unique district, but represents the country as a whole by having U-boats as a unique unit.

* ''Manga/AxisPowersHetalia''

The ''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]'' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') started off as an attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire, turned into a German kingdom, and ended up an empire InNameOnly that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him.

*** The War of the Austrian Succession is an instructive example of how this worked in practice. The war came about because the male-line Habsburgs were dying out, and the last two agnatic Habsburgs, Joseph I and his brother Charles VI, had expended a lot of political capital getting the other electors to secure a Habsburg succession through their daughters should both of them die without male issue. The problem was that the deals they secured were contradictory: Joseph's deal put his daughters ahead of any Charles might have, but in 1713 Charles (by that point Emperor) flipped that and got the electors to agree. This ''should'' have secured the succession for [[UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa his daughter]], but when Charles VI died, the Duke of Bavaria successfully nobbled all the other electors[[note]]This included Hanover; as the election happened two years into the war and Britain--in personal union with Hanover--was ''fighting on Austria's side'', this seems to have come as a bit of a shock to the Austrians. The Duke of Bavaria's brother, the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, also voted for him, even though he had allied Cologne with Austria and favored the Habsburg succession.[[/note]] and they backed him on the grounds that Charles VI's deal was improper and preference should have been given to the claims of his wife--one of Joseph I's daughters.

** After the Golden Bull but before the Reformation, the electors generally gave the imperial title to the Luxembourgs, Wittelsbachs, and Habsburgs in alternation. During this period, Bavaria still sometimes stepped in anyway for the Palatinate (when the Bavarian Wittlesbachs' scheming against their Palatinate cousins was particularly successful) or for Bohemia (when the rival Wittelsbach branches took a break from messing with each other and instead conspired with each other to exclude Bohemia on the grounds that he wasn't German). The House of Ascania also died out in the 15th century, and was replaced in Saxony by the similarly neutral and pliant House of Wettin. After the Reformation, the Palatinate Wittelsbachs were Protestants and the Bavarian ones Catholics, so early in the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar the (Catholic Habsburg) Emperor (who held his electorate as King of Bohemia) ganged up with the bishops to give the Wittelsbach electorate to the Bavarian branch. (The Emperor needed to rely on the bishops for this because at this point Saxony and Brandenburg were the leaders of the Protestant coalition within the Empire.) At the end of the war, the Peace of Westphalia gave a new, eighth electorate to the Protestant Palatinate Wittelsbachs in the interest of religious peace.

** The first document laying out a list of imperial electors is a 1265 letter by Pope Urban IV. The Pope, commenting on the election of 1257, said that, following "immemorial custom", the college had been composed of seven princes of the Empire. Four were secular rulers: the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count Palantine of the Rhine (who at the time was also the Duke of Bavaria) and the Duke of Saxony. The remaining three were the Archbishop-Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. This also maintained balance among the most major noble houses of the empire, as it gave two (Brandenburg and Saxony) electorates to the relatively neutral and pliant House of Ascania, and one (Bohemia) to the House of Přemysl, which didn't really consider itself a player in imperial politics. It also have only one electorate to a house in contention for the imperial throne (the House of Wittelsbach, as Count Palatine); the remaining three major houses (Hohenstaufen, Welf, and Habsburg) got no electorates at all (unless one of their junior members joined the clergy and became a prince-archbishop). As the Hohenstaufens, Welfs, and Habsburgs had been trading off being Emperor for the previous century, this arrangement forced them to rely more heavily on the lesser houses to win the crown (and made marrying into a house that did have an electorate a critical goal of High and Late Medieval strategy for these houses).

** The first document laying out a list of imperial electors is a 1265 letter by Pope Urban IV. The Pope, commenting on the election of 1257, said that, following "immemorial custom", the college had been composed of seven princes of the Empire. Four were secular rulers: the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count Palantine of the Rhine (who at the time was also the Duke of Bavaria) and the Duke of Saxony. The remaining three were the Archbishop-Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. This also maintained balance among the most major noble houses of the empire, as it gave only one electorate (the Palatinate) to the rising House of Wittelsbach while giving two (Brandenburg and Saxony) to the relatively neutral and pliant House of Ascania, and a fourth (Bohemia) to the House of Přemysl, which didn't really consider itself a player in imperial politics. It also gave no electorates at all to the Houses of Hohenstaufen, Welf, and Habsburg (unless one of their junior members joined the clergy and became a prince-archbishop) which had been trading off being Emperor for the previous century, forcing them to rely more heavily on the lesser houses to win the crown.

The ''Holy Roman Empire [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} of the German Nation]]'' (Latin: ''Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ''; German: ''Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation'') started off as an attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire, turned into a German kingdom, and ended up an empire InNameOnly that mostly clung to life because it meant the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor.

In the early UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance, the Empire flourished briefly under Charles V, the last ruler actually crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]], and the Emperor with the most extensive empire: not only did he have a firmer grasp on power within the Empire than any other Emperor for generations, he also ruled Spain and its vast New World empire directly (ruling the first "empire on which the Sun never sets"), and held substantial influence in the Italian states, Portugal, and the British Isles (all of which either consisted of Imperial client states or were so firmly opposed to France that they may as well have been client states). However, the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion and UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa of Austria, UsefulNotes/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 [[UsefulNotes/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).

Each of these developments caused issues. The Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria complained that they should have gotten an elctorate on the grounds that Bavaria (a major part of the Empire) was now unrepresented in the college, when before it had been. They were also annoyed that Bohemia got to vote, even though Bohemia wasn't German. Also, neither of the last two members of the Brandenburg Wittelsbach line had any heirs, so there was a risk that another Wittelsbach line might get it. Meanwhile, Austria was campaigning to be added to the college on the grounds of naked power politics.\\

Charles wasn't interested in having two or even three Wittelsbach electors if he could help it. He also saw Austria as a threat and kind of hated the Habsburgs' guts. Thus to silence the debate, he issued the Golden Bull of 1356, the first official, legal statement of who was an elector. The Bull legally confirmed the traditional configuration of Bohemia, Brandenburg, County Palatine, Saxony, Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. This would keep the Bavarian Wittelsbachs at the throats of their Palatinate cousins, while continuing to empower the Ascanias (whom Charles had in his pocket). It would also keep out the Austrian Habsburgs, based both on the lack of precedent for including Austria in the college and (again) because the Habsburgs were his main rivals. A few years later, Charles was also successful in putting his own son on the throne of Brandenburg after forcing the last, childless Wittelsbach out. The Golden Bull would remain in effect for the rest of the Empire's existence--albeit not without modification.

** The first document laying out a list of imperial electors is a 1265 letter by Pope Urban IV. The Pope, commenting on the election of 1257, said that, following "immemorial custom", the college had been composed of seven princes of the Empire. Four were secular rulers: the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count Palantine of the Rhine (who at the time was also the Duke of Bavaria) and the Duke of Saxony. The remaining three were the Archbishop-Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. This also maintained balance among the most major noble houses of the empire, as it gave only one electorate (the Palatinate) to the rising House of Wittelsbach while giving two (Brandenburg and Saxony) to the relatively neutral and pliant House of Ascania, and a fourth (Bohemia) to the House of Přemyslid, which didn't really consider itself a player in imperial politics. It also gave no electorates at all to the Houses of Hohenstaufen, Welf, and Habsburg (unless one of their junior members joined the clergy and became a prince-archbishop) which had been trading off being Emperor for the previous century, forcing them to rely more heavily on the lesser houses to win the crown.

Each of these developments caused issues. The Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria complained that they should have gotten an elctorate on the grounds that Bavaria (a major part of the Empire) was now unrepresented in the college, when before it had been. They were also annoyed that Bohemia got to vote, even though Bohemia wasn't German. Also, neither of the last two members of the Brandenburg Wittelsbach line had any heirs, so there was a risk that another Wittelsbach line might get it. Meanwhile, Austria was campaigning to be added to the college for nakedly political reasons.\\

Charles wasn't interested in having two or even three Wittelsbach electors if he could help it. He also saw Austria as a threat and kind of hated the Habsburgs' guts. Thus to silence the debate, he issued the Golden Bull of 1356, the first official, legal statement of who was an elector. The Bull legally confirmed the traditional configuration of Bohemia, Brandenburg, County Palatine, Saxony, Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. This would keep the Bavarian Wittelsbachs at the throats of their Palatinate cousins, while continuing to empower the Ascanias (whom Charles had in his pocket). A few years later, he was also successful in putting his own son on the throne of Brandenburg after forcing the last, childless Wittelsbach out. The Golden Bull would remain in effect for the rest of the Empire's existence--albeit not without modification.

[[caption-width-right:260: Hoch Hapsburg!]]

** The Imperial title became ''de facto'' hereditary within the House of Habsburg towards the end of the 15th century, when the Luxembourgs petered out--leaving much of their territory (most significantly Bohemia and its juicy electorate) to a Habsburg who had married a Luxembourg princess. (Meanwhile, Brandenburg went to the previously insignificant and Wettinesquely pliant House of Hohenzollern--though they wouldn't be insignificant or pliant for very long.) With the Wittelsbach branches at each other's throats about religion, the Imperial throne went to the Habsburgs time and time again basically by default. After this pattern settled in, the Electors generally did not keep the "obvious" heir from the throne until the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheAustrianSuccession (although even before then the "obvious" heir would usually make a point of doing favors for the electors to keep them from holding up the vote when the time came).

** By the reign of Emperor Charles IV, the composition of the electoral college had become a point of contention, largely because of the rising ambitions and problems of three houses: the Wittelsbachs, the Luxembourgs, and the Habsburgs. Charles, a Luxembourg, had snagged Bohemia himself and was scheming more broadly to enhance his territory. Meanwhile, the Wittelsbachs had split the County Palatine from Bavaria under separate branches, and still a third Wittelsbach line taken over in Brandenburg. On top of that, the Dukes of Austria under the House of Habsburg was gaining prominence, having been elected King but not crowned Emperor twice between the election of 1257 and Charles IV's day.\\

** By the reign of Emperor Charles IV, the composition of the electoral college had become a point of contention, largely because of the rising ambitions and problems of three houses: the Wittelsbachs, the Luxembourgs, and the Habsburgs. Charles, a Luxembourg, had snagged Bohemia himself and was scheming more broadly to enhance his territory. Meanwhile, the Wittelsbachs had split the County Palatine from Bavaria under separate branches, and still a third Wittelsbach line taken over in Brandenburg. And in the background, the Duke of Austria under the House of Habsburg was gaining prominence, having been elected King but not crowned Emperor four times between the election of 1257 and Charles IV's day.\\

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 [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of UsefulNotes/{{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 [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[UsefulNotes/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--and that the main Muslim leader at the time, Saladin, was a Kurd...[[/note]]

Despite its name, the empire had many traits of a confederation, with the German King (Emperor-elect) being [[ElectiveMonarchy 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 (eventually better known as the Kings of Prussia) and Meißen (later better known as the Dukes/Prince-Electors of 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, most of which had to do with the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether interminable family conflicts]] of the [[BigScrewedUpFamily House of Wittelsbach]]. 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 duke and Count were Wittelsbachs) and/or conspiring with Bohemia to exclude the Count Palatine (for reasons of South German geopolitics). During the UsefulNotes/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 [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfHanover find greater success elsewhere]]). As luck would have it, the original Catholic Wittelsbach line of Bavaria petered out shortly thereafter, leaving the Catholic Palatinate Wittelsbachs to inherit Bavaria, as well, making the whole charade a moot point (although Hannover got to keep his electorate, nobody wishing to rock the boat). 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 Petty Princedom period features beautiful [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses princesses]] stifled by the dull etiquette of a DeadlyDecadentCourt wondering which foreign prince they will be married off to, rebellious court musicians, and fountains running with wine at the conclusion of the Peace of [[BilingualBonus Pumpernickel-Knoblauch]].

* Siegfried Schtauffen, TheHero of the ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'', is from the Holy Roman Empire. Hilde, introduced in ''IV'', is a [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses princess]] from the fictional kingdom of Wolfkrone, which also lies within the Empire (apparently near Switzerland).

Germany as a realm separate from the Frankish empire emerged with the Treaties of Verdun (843) and Mersen (870). Modern historians tend to distinguish between Charlemagne's Empire (usually referred to as the Frankish Kingdoms or the Carolingian Empire), and the proper Holy Roman Empire, which itself is exclusively descendant from the Eastern Frankish realm when the Carolingian Frankish Kingdom fractured. Thus, while Charlemagne was officially crowned "Roman Emperor" by the Pope, it is more common to refer to Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor. The title of "Roman Emperor" bounced around between various descendants of Louis the Pious, but the lands of the title holder varied, at first holding the entire Caroligian Empire (Charlemagne and Louis the Pious), then the Middle Frankish Kingdom (area of modern day Low Countries, Burgundy, and Northern Italy), then to just Northern Italy, and so on. The title fell out of use for 38 years, until Otto I was crowned Roman Emperor, where the title was once again in continuous use, and it became associated with the German lands. 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, reflecting Frederick Barbarossa's ambition to rule Italy and the Papacy. Prior to that, it had variously (and highly inconsistently) been referred to as "Imperium Romanum" ("Roman Empire"), "Imperium Teutonicorum" ("German Empire" or "Empire of the Germans"), and "Regnum Teutonicorum" ("Kingdom of Germany" or "Kingdom of the Germans"). Once again, readers should keep in mind that there was a ''still existing'' Roman Empire in the form of the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire, and the Byzantines were deeply insulted when the Pope crowned "Roman Emperors," which massively contributed to the East-West schism in Christianity. Keep in mind that at the time, the Byzantines were still calling themselves the Roman Empire and Romans (the term Byzantine didn't even appear until the 16th century, well ''after'' their empire had fallen in 1453) so the Pope was giving just about the biggest snub possible to their rulers.

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 [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of UsefulNotes/{{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 [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[UsefulNotes/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--and that the main Muslim leader the time, Saladin, was a Kurd...[[/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 [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]] Leo III placed the crown on the head of UsefulNotes/{{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 [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire pagan]] and Christian Rome -- Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-1190) going so far as to assert that one of his reasons for going on [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusade]] was to avenge the defeat of [[Film/{{Spartacus}} Crassus]] by the Parthians ([[UsefulNotes/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 (eventually better known as the Kings of Prussia) and Meißen (later better known as the Dukes/Prince-Electors of Saxony), and the Count Palatine on the Rhine (''Pfalzgraf bei Rhein'').

* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' has a campaign where you play as the Holy Roman Empire - Minnesinger

!! Tropes often associated with the Holy Roman Empire:

* ArtifactTitle: The empire's name gradually became this as the Voltaire quote from the top of the page exemplifies. By the late 18th Century, the empire had gone through so many corruption scandals that calling itself "holy" was considered a joke and SnarkBait, it had lost most of its former Italian possessions (including Rome), and its authority over the states that it ''did'' still control had grown so weak that the "emperor" had become little more than an honorary title as respected the territory within the Empire. (The Emperor remained a very powerful figure, of course, but that was because--with one [[UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa notable exception]]--he was by that point always the head of the House of Habsburg and held vast territories, many outside the Empire's borders, by dynastic right; particularly significant were the titles Archduke of Austria and King of Bohemia--inside the Empire--and King of Hungary--which was outside it.)
** This was briefly averted during the realm of Charles V of Habsburg, as one of the titles he inherited from the Spanish side of succession was the actual title of Emperor of the Romans, which had been sold by Andreas Palaiologos, a pretender to the throne. Mind you, the guy also sold the title to the then King of France, Charles VIII, but after the French lost the Italian Wars it was more or less clear who had the preeminence on the title.
* 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 treaty was later found to be a forgery.
** Historians are still debating on the group responsible for forging the treaty, as it was a very popular AssPull for those involved.
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: Charlemagne's coronation at St. Peter's has to have been pretty awesome. And yet Charles' court biographer Einhard wrote that it came as a surprise to the king ... which probably makes it just the more awesome. He wrote that Charlemagne was actually mad at the pope, because he was crowned by him ''before'' being acclaimed by Italians, which implied his power came from the pope rather than his own might.
* CorruptChurch: Given the corruption and political power plays within the Medieval Catholic Church, it comes as no surprise that the HRE would witness (and participate in) both a Papal ''civil war'' and later on the Reformation.
* DeadlyDecadentCourt: A staple of the Petty Princedom period.
* ElectiveMonarchy: The Emperor was elected by the Prince-electors.
** Although the imperial office became ''de facto'' hereditary under the Hapsburgs since the early fifteenth century, with the exception of a brief period from 1742 to 1745 when a lack of male heirs threatened the Hapsburg monopoly on the empire and led to the Elector of Bavaria being elected emperor. He was succeeded by Francis of Lorraine, the husband to the Hapsburg heiress Maria Theresa, which led to the Hapsburgs regaining the title of Holy Roman Emperor until the HRE was dissolved.
* TheEmperor: For about a thousand years, when people in Western Europe said "The Emperor," this was the guy they meant. It should, perhaps, be pointed out that the term was very rarely used in the full negative sense it bears in modern popular culture; the [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure office]] was generally respected, even if the man filling it was not.
* TheEmpire: Ditto. Most English maps of the 15th-18th century period simply slap the giant words "THE EMPIRE" across Germany.
** And at certain times, such as during the reigns of Charlemagne and Barbarossa, it really was more of a relatively unified country than the entity it ultimately became.
* TheFederation: Especially after the Middle Ages.
* FeudingFamilies: The Welf vs. Salian/Hohenstaufen feud is a particularly bad example. It started with simple power struggles then took on religious significance with the Investiture Controversy. Their feud was so intense that it quickly engulfed Italy (where the parties were known as the "Guelphs" and the "Ghibellines"), leading to three centuries of strife. The vast majority of Christendom was drawn in as well to a degree, particularly France and England, who were happy to support whatever side had the most power at the time to support their own interests. Neither side really won: the Welfs were stripped off most of their power and the last two male Hohenstaufens both died at the hands of French and Italian Guelphs. The Welfs had remarkable staying power, however, and (as the House of Hanover) ended up as the kings of Great Britain in the 18th century (this is why you occasionally run into mentions of "Guelph" this or "Guelphic" that in random places across Britain and the former British Empire, like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelph a city in Ontario]]).
* HegemonicEmpire: Much of the Emperor's power was soft power.
* TheHighQueen: UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette (although her execution took place after her mother's death, marital alliances with France always were a source of troubles).
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: UsefulNotes/TheTeutonicKnights, who were really about on a par with other mediæval rulers, emerge in popular culture as proto-[[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Nazis]] dedicated to PuttingOnTheReich. The fact that the Nazis themselves appropriated the Teutonic Knights' imagery for propaganda purposes (after violently suppressing the real Knights, rendering them unable to object) didn't help with this image problem. Their common soldiers are all FacelessGoons.
** A small fact to remember is that the Teutonic Knights were invited by request of the Polish Duke of Masovia to help him against the Pagan Prussians.
* JokerJury / TrialOfTheMysticalJury: The Vehmgericht vacillates between these two tropes.
* LandOfOneCity: The Free Imperial Cities (''freie Reichsstädte'') were this.
* LongRunners: The Holy Roman Empire had an uninterrupted existence of 844 years, from 962 to 1806.
* MercyKill: By the time UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte had the HRE dissolved entirely, barely anything of it actually remained.
* MicroMonarchy: Although not all were strictly monarchies, there were ''hundreds'' of territories in the HRE that consisted of just a city or town or the land surrounding a castle or a monastery. There were so many that historians still debate exactly how many there were at some times.
* NiceHat: There were several: the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the Crown of Charlemagne, the mitred crown of Rudolph II, and the little military hat of Friedrich II of UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}}, who famously said, "A crown is just a hat that lets the rain in."
* NonIndicativeName: One of the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire got its name is because it was directly descended from the eastern half of the Carolingian Empire before it split away in the civil wars following the death of Charlemange, the King of the Franks who had been recognized and declared Emperor by the Pope. But although the HRE proudly proclaimed itself as a legitimate successor to the Carolingian Empire, it never did live up to the expectations and criteria required to be formally recognized as a proper Empire and to be true to its name. It was more of a loose confederation of Germanic Kingdoms that seemed to always have petty grievances and squabbles and was not on friendly terms with the Pope.
->"This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." ~Voltaire
* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: Or rather, its pre-[[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution French Revolution]] equivalent; "Holy," "Roman," and "Empire" were the great political buzzwords of the time, and by the end, it managed to be none of them[[note]]or at least not Holy or Roman. The Empire bit was accurate up to the end insofar as it fulfilled the technical requirements of both the English and German names -- it was a Realm (a very loose one, but not without common institutions) headed by an Emperor recognised within and outside the realm as an Emperor. The problem was that the Empire ''was'' the Artifact -- when other European realms had organised, consolidated and become modern states, the Empire... hadn't.[[/note]]. Most of the time the Holy Roman Emperors didn't even have any power in Rome itself. The "German" part (which was only official after 1512) is a bit more complicated; its core territory was Germany throughout its history, but it also contained much of North Italy, and Czech and Slovene lands until long after its demise.
** 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 UsefulNotes/ThePope at Rome, as in 1903 when the Imperial veto against Cardinal Rampolla resulted in the election of Cardinal Sarto as Pope St. Pius X. Who promptly rescinded that veto power and declared that outside interference in future Papal conclaves would incur automatic excommunication.
* StarCrossedLovers: Agnes von Staufen and Heinrich von Braunschweig; she was a Hohenstaufen (half-niece of Friedrich Barbarossa) and he was a Welf (son of Heinrich the Lion). Her father, Konrad, originally arranged for them to marry to ease the tensions between the two families. However, her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor, wanted her to marry Philippe II of France instead and Konrad went along with this plan. Agnes and her mother secretly invited Heinrich to Stahleck Castle and they quickly married while he was away. Agnes' father and cousin was incensed at the news, but both eventually came around and let the two of them stay married.
* TakeThat: The Pope declared a new Roman empire in the west as a TakeThat to the [[UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire Eastern Roman Empire]] based in Constantinople. Though more often than not, the Empire itself tended to have this attitude towards the Pope's power.
* 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, the Principality of Liechtenstein, which still exists today.

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* NonIndicativeName: One of the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire got its name is because it was directly descended from the eastern half of the Carolingian Empire before it split away in the civil wars following the death of Charlemange. But although the HRE proudly proclaimed itself as a legitimate successor to the Carolingian Empire, it never did live up to the expectations and criteria required to be formally recognized as a proper Empire and to be true to its name.

* NonIndicativeName: The reason why the Holy Roman Empire got its name is because it was directly descended from the eastern half of the Carolingian Empire before it split away in the civil wars following the death of Charlemange. But although the HRE proudly proclaimed itself as a legitimate successor to the Carolingian Empire, it never did live up to the expectations and criteria required to be formally recognized as a proper Empire and to be true to its name.