Make the HRE survive and unite Europe

Well, Elfwine, not so categorically, and not exactly in this sense:
- West Slavs and part of the Southern have been under and used by mainly Germanic powers and serving Rome being Catholics / thus their man and other resources utilized by "foreigners".

And (for instance) East Slavs ruling West Slavs is less "foreign" how again?

- East Slavs ... they made it in Empire-building and they are kinda proof-of-concept of what I'm stating -- with approx. 1/4er to 1/3rd of the total Slavdom content they are factor even in noawadays OTL.
So that Russia is a power is proof of . . .

what.

- South slavs - gravitating around and under different orientalist empires.

Orientalist? What?

IF all these peoples were under one "master", a single cultural and political code ... not necessary to be their own, authochtonous... they comprise the most significant human resource in Europe.

And "all of these peoples" are diverse enough - and not because of foreigners meddling in the lot of the unfortunate Slavs - that it makes no sense to speak of Slavdom as one entity.


Not so completely. First the Slavdom territory is more or less compact - roughly the triangle: Holstein - Peloponnese - Mid.Volga and more or less homogenous panethnically. There are OTL precedents in which a Slavic or non-Slavic power have controlled significant part of this space, and I can say in these periods holding this realty and asset was crucial for the Power to be strong.
And I can say that you're still overlooking the problems involved.

Well it is. More land = more people. More land+people = more power.

It's not nearly that simple, however, or we'd be having a conversation in Russian about "What if England amounted to anything?"

Heck, more land = more people itself requires "all things being equal" in terms of agricultural production.
 
The problem is that it doesn't work in the Emperor's favor. The Emperors need a power base that doesn't rely on the nobles deciding that they're sufficiently well rewarded to support him for a while.

Counter-problem is that the Emperor needs to be able to have the support of the nobility without Papal interference. If he can outmaneuver the papacy. especially when there is some central authority in the Empire, then he has a lot more leverage. The papacy used the threat of excommunication very effectively, and I'm not sure Europe was ready for a Protestant movement in the 1000s-1100s
 
Counter-problem is that the Emperor needs to be able to have the support of the nobility without Papal interference. If he can outmaneuver the papacy. especially when there is some central authority in the Empire, then he has a lot more leverage. The papacy used the threat of excommunication very effectively, and I'm not sure Europe was ready for a Protestant movement in the 1000s-1100s

Yeah, it's a problem.

What I don't understand, and I've spent some time searching on this site to try to make sense of . . .

Why didn't the emperors succeed? I mean, okay, it's a big task. So was doing what the Emperors failed to do unto the HRE in France for those kings.

So what kept things from consolidating?

One thing I suspect, and this is looking at the Hohenstaufen . . .

Things didn't go right. For instance, Henry VI died young (thirty two). Which means that instead of having twenty five years or so to build on what he had done up to 1197, things fell back into "the emperor's position is weak and the Papacy and nobility and Italian towns will exploit that mercilessly". And his son was more occupied with Sicily than Germany.

France got Philip II in roughly the same period as Henry VI, and Philip was able to effectively wield royal power - and even greatly weaken the Angevins, despite them being more powerful vassals than anyone including Henry the Lion that any Emperor I know of had to deal with.

So it goes back to having the Emperors needing the resources to build a secure position where their vassals don't dare cause trouble just because the Emperor isn't looking at them.

From there, we can enlist their active cooperation and move forward, IMO.
 
What was the status of the title King of the Romans, was it still being used as a way of having a son or relative elected as the next Emperor whilst the current one was still alive? It's like you said you need a get a stretch of several effective Emperors who can pass things on to their successors to fully cement the changes. Another thing that they really need to do I think is build up a power-base in Germany, one possible idea I had was when Frederick I seizes the Duchies of Saxony and Bavaria rather than handing them out he tries to keep parts of them in the family much like the Habsburgs did with Austria. Granted that was from the line dying out but they could still try to grab a small but well off state to build up on in the future.
 
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