German hereditary monarchy by 1100's?

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Deleted member 1487

Challege: Is it possible to get a german nation, ie HRE minus Italy, with a hereditary monarchy that is in place by 1100? Empire or Kingdom is fine, but the pope should not be able interfer like OTL.
 
Henry IV wins the Investure conflict against Gregory VII.

If he (Henry IV) decisively breaks the rebellions, he could use the oppurtunity to make the Empire hereditary.

Another (or combined) approach might be the French one: initially France was also an elective monarchy (it was how the Capetians ended up on the throne after the Carolingians). But the first French kings made their sons co-rulers, so they could succeed smoothly after the king bought it. This lead to a de-facto hereditary monarchy. Introducing this principle to Germany would not be that big of a conceptual leep.
 

General Zod

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Henry IV wins the Investure conflict against Gregory VII.

If he (Henry IV) decisively breaks the rebellions, he could use the oppurtunity to make the Empire hereditary.

That. Or the Ottonian dynasty is unbroken as Otto III lives to a ripe old age and a long successful reign, with a competent string of successors, who manage to entrench hereditary succession by the end of the XI century.

Another (or combined) approach might be the French one: initially France was also an elective monarchy (it was how the Capetians ended up on the throne after the Carolingians). But the first French kings made their sons co-rulers, so they could succeed smoothly after the king bought it. This lead to a de-facto hereditary monarchy. Introducing this principle to Germany would not be that big of a conceptual leep.

Another possibility. But the exact legal mechanisms are really not important, either the nominations of sons as co-rulers, or an explicit change in succession law (as Henry VI Hohenstaufen unsuccessfully tried to do). What you need is an unbroken dynasty of successful, charismatic, competent, long-lived, and healthy rulers who focus on centralizing the German lands against feudal and ecclesiastical centrifugal forces for at least a century and place any other concerns (such as propping up Imperial rule in Italy) in the second row. Italy can be easily won and the Popes crushed after the Emperors have brought a centralized Germany under their firm control, not the other way around.
 
Germany needs the Ottonian dynasty to just last. Not be super competent, just keep getting at least one son who can live to adult-hood every generation. I think the Capets' (and thus France's) success can be traced primarily to the fact that they didn't die out- which seems simple enough but that kind of line is not seen all that often in European dynasties where lords are military commanders and disease stalks everyone.

So Otto III has a son. The Holy Roman Empire is a Saxon affair, with Otto IV continuing the dynasty. As long as the Saxons can keep having kids, then the HRE will continue to function as a hereditary monarchy. The Saxon dynasy was personally responsible for this iternation of the Holy Roman Empire, and as long as their line stays alive it will be able to count on that source of legitimacy. When the Saxons produce particularly competent Emperors, they will also able to claim pretty wide-ranging fuedal supremacy, the like of which later Imperial dynasties never aspired to.
 
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Their noblemen might still rebel at some point, and everyone who doesn't like the power of the HREmperor would help them.
 
Their noblemen might still rebel at some point, and everyone who doesn't like the power of the HREmperor would help them.

French noblemen repeatedly revolted against the French crown, however, since the Capets were able to keep the crown in legitimate male lines (all the collateral lines that inherited the crown were male-descended, so there is a direct legitimate male line back to the original Capet, Hugh) the monarchy was never forced to give up any real power. The kind of dynastic squabbles that result from male line extinction never happened in France.

I know that legitimate male line descent seems a thin basis for a unified monarchy. But compare French history to the rest of Western Europe. The English, the Iberian monarchies, the HRE and its constituent kingdoms, none of them had that long-lived dynasty. And none had a unified monarchy like the French. Actually, the Spanish developed one, but that was because of the Hapsburg sudden access to American gold. I feel that disqualifies them.
 
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