AHC: Holy Roman Empire-Like Britain

It is possible that we could have a Britain where the title of King is an elected title and numerous Duchies and Principalities around the country?

For Example;

The Duchies of London, Cornwall, Nottingham and the Principality of St. Albans in England

The Duchies of Edinburgh, Inverness and the Principalities of Falkirk and Glasgow in Scotland

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Wales is controlled by the Duchy of Cornwall, as it is the premier power in the British Isles

Ireland is envassled to the British King and has been since the Lords of Ireland presented an oath of vassalage to Arthur II, King of Britain in 1201


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Please discuss the plausibility of this scenario
 
I think it could happen under some circumstances, but I highly doubt it would last for very long. England is just too small to permanently devolve like the HRE did.
 
Agree with Tangerine: the HRE was the way it was because it was a vast, sprawling Empire which spanned from the heartland of Europe to the eastern marcher lands of Christendom; transport was difficult and each major landholder had substantial resources behind them. England, as a relatively small island (easing transport) doesn't have those problems and is therefore far more likely to submit to a single state or ruler than Central Europe.
 

King James IX

And Wales as the premier power of the British Isles...wait, what? how?

You misunderstood the wording. I think he meant that Cornwall (the greatest power in the Isles) controls Wales.
 
If the Norman Conquest is avoided it might be possible to strengthen the Witenagemot to the point where it isn't just a rubber stamp for primogeniture succession.
 
I would believe a HRE-style Britain would be more along the lines of the Heptarchy rather than anything else. As for the 'premier power', it would be the three greats: Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, Wales & Scotland would probably be split into smaller earldoms/duchies etc rather than one power.

Wales would most likely be split into Powys and Deheubarth (as the main powers in the region) with numerous smaller states/earldoms/duchies along the southern Welsh coast. Scotland would most likely be spilt amongst Strathclyde, the Lowlands, Highlands and then the numerous islands. For Ireland, it depends if the British invade or the Irish join.

For a POD, the no Norman Conquest could prove useful. No heredity crown and a much stronger Witan would led to such a HRE-style Britain.
 
In early Anglo Saxion times there were if I remember 10-14 little kingdoms,which had by the time of the viking raids had combined into 5-7 kingdoms.
You would need two things to have happened
1. King Swen Haroldson and King Canute Swenson of Denmark would not have conquered England
2. No Norman invasion, Maybe have William the bastard drowned at birth
 
'Highland' and 'Lowland' are cultural terms dating to the 14th C or so and pretty much synonymous with Saxondom and Gaeldom. The geographical faultline has never perfectly matched this divide (parishes in Caithness were considered 'Lowland' in the 17th and 18th centuries, for example) and certainly didn't then, when much of the southwestern backwoods were Gaelic-speaking, never mind in early medieval times when Welsh is into the mix as well.

The great divisions in Scotland - which was by virtue of geography always less centralised than England - in about the early 1000s were Alba between the Mounths, the Forth, the sea, and Drumalban; Moray north of the Mounths and taking in much of the northern Highlands, whose rulers were the great rivals of the Scottish kings; Welsh-speaking Strathclyde, where the heirs to the throne appear to have ruled by some system of lateral succession at some point; recently conquered Lothian; a Norse-Gael kingdom in Galloway which felt able to navigate between Scottish and English allegiances; and the Norse rulers on Orkney and the Hebrides, who were involved in the power-politics of the region but were actually subject to Norway. Argyll and the western Highlands seem to have been dominated by shifting clannish powers aligned to one dynasty of the other.

Hey, put it like that, and it begins to sound like there was such a period, no? ;) If you want to stretch it, the whole northern Norse-influences world was full of intimately-connected power-centres all struggling to get the top-spot, which Sveyn and Knut briefly did, up until 1066. And that northern world, though I can't vouch any exact figure, probably had fewer people in it than the empire of Charlemagne.

In early Anglo Saxion times there were if I remember 10-14 little kingdoms,which had by the time of the viking raids had combined into 5-7 kingdoms.
You would need two things to have happened
1. King Swen Haroldson and King Canute Swenson of Denmark would not have conquered England
2. No Norman invasion, Maybe have William the bastard drowned at birth

But their exploits were possible because the Saxons had already established a pretty organised state for the time. They could beat the army, ride into London, plonk down on the throne, and then crush or subvert a sufficiency of rebellious magnates and bam, they were kings of England.

The Great Heathen Army couldn't do that, precisely because the kingdom of England didn't yet exist.
 
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Ireland is envassled to the British King and has been since the Lords of Ireland presented an oath of vassalage to Arthur II, King of Britain in 1201

I note that nobody has disputed this part of the scenario that even I thought unlikely when I was thinking it up
 
I note that nobody has disputed this part of the scenario that even I thought unlikely when I was thinking it up

I note that rather than adapting British politics to suit the HRE political system, people are adapting their understandings of the HRE system to loosely match up with what happened OTL.

I'm trying to find a way of creating a College of Electors who vote on the new Emperor (High King), of developing geographical "circles" as the HRE did to give a voice to the petty state rulers who would ordinarily be too insignificant to be listened to or to necessitate yearly Diets where every ruler was required to attend to assist in the law-making process, but I have to say I'm struggling to find plausible excuses.
 
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