Great Saxon Empire, ca. 1000

I would like to know if this map would seem realistic for the scenario where the Saxons take over a divided Carolingian Empire by the 8th century and consolidates it until ca. 1000.

Ten Grand Duchies subdivided in several minor duchies:

GSXE_01.png
 
Wait, are we talking about pagan or Christian Saxons here? If pagans, I think the Christian population of Western Europe would hardly accept a foreign domination by unbelievers. Besides the Saxons were a demographic minority compared to the Franks in Neustria or Burgundy, for example. The fact that they gave so much work to Charlemagne owed more to local guerrilla warfare, but I don't think they can simply "counterattack" and reconquer Frankia - divided as it may be.

If Christians, that's sort of what happened IOTL. The Ottonian dynasty was Saxon, after all (ok, they descended from Frankish nobility). Perhaps if the Carolingian conquest of Saxony is a bit less violent, and the Saxon nobility survives intact, they will in the future be able to make their own bid for power. I imagine this more as dynastic takeover than simply a populational conquest.
 
Wait, are we talking about pagan or Christian Saxons here? If pagans, I think the Christian population of Western Europe would hardly accept a foreign domination by unbelievers. Besides the Saxons were a demographic minority compared to the Franks in Neustria or Burgundy, for example. The fact that they gave so much work to Charlemagne owed more to local guerrilla warfare, but I don't think they can simply "counterattack" and reconquer Frankia - divided as it may be.

If Christians, that's sort of what happened IOTL. The Ottonian dynasty was Saxon, after all (ok, they descended from Frankish nobility). Perhaps if the Carolingian conquest of Saxony is a bit less violent, and the Saxon nobility survives intact, they will in the future be able to make their own bid for power. I imagine this more as dynastic takeover than simply a populational conquest.

Absolutely this :D

After a Carolingian (Frankish) fall, Saxon elites take over the realm.
 
If Christians, that's sort of what happened IOTL. The Ottonian dynasty was Saxon, after all (ok, they descended from Frankish nobility). Perhaps if the Carolingian conquest of Saxony is a bit less violent, and the Saxon nobility survives intact, they will in the future be able to make their own bid for power. I imagine this more as dynastic takeover than simply a populational conquest.

That depends what you mean with "descended from". I agree that Heinrich the Falconer certainly had Franks among his ancestors. But the Liudolfings/Ottons in all likelihood were not a "colonial" Frankish family like the later Welfs were. The only tradition we have about their ancestors points at Brun, leader of the Engern Saxons, who capitulated to Charlemagne in 775.
 
OK, but that needs a PoD before this Saxon dynasty takes over the Northern and Eastern remnants of Charlemagne`s Empire.
 
No need to conquer them, maybe the Slavs just didn't migrate as far west as IOTL.

Slavs migrated that far west by the end of the 6th Century CE... well before Charlemagne. So a stunted Slavic migration would butterfly out the Carolingians by a few hundred years.
 
I don't think the eastern borders are that much of an issue. An organised polity could easily subject the fragmented Western Slavic peoples much as it did IOTL, especially if we are talking tributary relationships. Greater Moravia looks like an analogue of OTL's local emerging power, subject to the authority of the political centre. The boprders are a bit too close to OTL developments to look butterfly-proof, but that's minor.

What interests me much more is how the Saxons in the eighth century manage to take over the Empire and govern it. What's the political structure enabling that? Saxony, by what little we know, seems to have been all but incapable of governing itself in before it had Carolingian institutions imposed on it. This doesn't look like the work of a loose confederation of tribal nobility.
 
Actually in 928/929 Henry the Fowler managed to conquer the territory roughly equal to modern day states of Brandenburg (with Berlin) and Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Control was lost in 983 only to be regained again in 1150.

As for the map, such detail and it still includes Flevoland:(, also the region on the map called Altfranken might be better called Mainfranken, Altfranken basically was Rheinfranken & Salfranken.
 
What interests me much more is how the Saxons in the eighth century manage to take over the Empire and govern it. What's the political structure enabling that? Saxony, by what little we know, seems to have been all but incapable of governing itself in before it had Carolingian institutions imposed on it. This doesn't look like the work of a loose confederation of tribal nobility.

In fact it would happen by mid-9th century, once they were incorporated into the Carolingian realm and adapted to their structure.

As I explained in another thread, the idea was keeping Charlemagne out of Italy which would also mean that his son Pepin might survive until his father's death. Then Pepin inherits the northern part with Louis getting the southern and eventually fighting the Lombards instead of his father.

When Pepin dies, his son Bernard is not accepted as heir by the elites and a brief period of anarchy follows Pepin's death. Then, the Saxons take advantage on the situation to depose the Franks and take over the realms and gradually expand them afterwards.
 
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