Holy Roman Centralization

1 - Otto II doesn't young (same for his son).
2 - The Salians do better against the pope.
3 - The Hohenstauffens do better.

After 1250 it's incredibly hard, the Interregnum messed everything, but for the Habsburgs I see some, even remote, possibilities:

1 - Maximillian defeat the Swiss in the Swabian War.
2 - John of Asturias doesn't die, the Habsburg remain focusing of Germany (it hurts their budget though)
3- Decisive victory in the TYW.
 
1 - Otto II doesn't young (same for his son).
2 - The Salians do better against the pope.
3 - The Hohenstauffens do better.

After 1250 it's incredibly hard, the Interregnum messed everything, but for the Habsburgs I see some, even remote, possibilities:

1 - Maximillian defeat the Swiss in the Swabian War.
2 - John of Asturias doesn't die, the Habsburg remain focusing of Germany (it hurts their budget though)
3- Decisive victory in the TYW.

Good points. Of all those you raised, how could the Salians manage to outmaneuver the Papacy?
 
I don't know enough about the mediaeval history of the Empire to comment on that, but avoiding Swedish and French intervention in the *Thirty Years' War could work, given that by the time Gustavus landed in Pomerania the Emperor had essentially crushed all his rivals in the Empire.
 
A centralized feudal state would be impossible : by definition, feudality implies a relativly important distribution of power.
But by the time feudality was replaced by something else, HRE looked at best as a loose confederation : we must then try to tinker something in Middle-Ages, IMO.

Not that HREmperors didn't tried, regularly, to unify strongly the empire on their own rule, but it generally failed due to the same reasons.

Keeping in mind that HRE had to answer several challenges (overextension, that made Italy managable only at the expense of loosing grasp on Germany, and vice-versa; struggles with papacy; strong vassal states; dynastic unstability after Ottonians and Salians; etc) I think a centralisation as it happened in Britain, France or inside HRE states wouldn't work, and HRE should find its own path (which would have the benefit to better fit plausibility, not being a copy/paste)

As in, keeping a relativly open structure, not really centralizing as its neighbours, but unifying around the imperial kingship, as sort of a federation (the challenge there being managing to put that between hegemonic imperial ambitions and HRE entities own centralisation)

Not only a political organisation as such, but (even uneasy) a subodrinated collegiality of power (as in, in the case of Salian victory over sacerdotal conflicts, having prince-bishops remaining as part of direct imperial administration rather than living their own) and being able to enjoy favourable conditions that are not directly due to reforms (such as dynastical stability, allowing de facto hereditary transmission being slowed considered as natural, as in Capetian France).

Salian dynasty may have the most chances to deal with, IMO : more the unification process is delayed, more confederal it's going to tend to be eventually, German states knowing their own process of unification (or even centralisation by the XVIIth century).

I think, but that's an overall point of view rather than backed for every possible outcome, that while imperial kingship could be a really important factor of unity (would it be only for being a regulation factor), a certain dose of collegiality (even if under the direction of the imperial authority) is bound to happen including, inside imperial administration, between the emperors, the aristocracy, the bishops (and the papacy if HRE holds Italy).
More important and universalist the HRE, more collegial the authority may be, while a more Germanic based empire (as OTL late medieval HRE) would develop a national identity, providing a base for more unified entity.

Of course, the centralizing model of its neighbours is going to impact and influence over time, but the constituting entities of HRE are going to follow them as well than imperial authority itself. Simple institutional copy/paste wouldn't be enough (and probably hurtful at term).
 
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