WI/AHC: Culturally French state on the Rhine

Your challenge, is to have a culturally French state on the Rhine River, holding at least Trier and the Palatinate, with any POD after 1000 AD.

The state doesn't need to be independent, but it cannot be a part of another country, like (Burgundy, I think?) before the HYW to France.
 
Successful Louis XIV campaigns and annexation over the Rhine could be really helpful.
Basically, we could end with French Flanders, Luxemburg and/or Palatinate which were only temporary annexed IOTL.

As for Burgundy being culturally French, I think it's clearly most complex : Burgundian chancery and court certainly were as most of their holdings; but others (such as in Flanders) were since a long time autonomous including culturally and Burgundian court never really managed to get a cultural grasp on that, quite at the contrary).

Last realistic possibility is, IMO, French Revolutionary Wars in a TL where Montagne is still in power : they didn't believed much in an all-annexation geostrategy (as Directoire did), but rather to set up other pro-french republics such as the Republic of Mainz.

With enough Montagnard France's success, it could realistically be considered culturally as Franco-German.

Anything past that is, because of France's relative decline in the first part of XIXth century and rise of German nationalism, hugely unlikely. There's a reason if annexation or sattelisation of Rhineland was never really considered by France in WW1 (in spite of tentatives to make it appear as real goals of war (generally to make them equivalent of German plans of annexation), it was essentially far-right wet dream and nothing more).

The only think I could see as doable after the XVIIIth would be durable sattelisation of Saar/Sarre, and even that would require major changes : and forget possibilities of annexation trough referundum. That's simply not going to happen, while blunt annexation in a worse peace for Germany is technically possible (but you can bet that it wouldn't acculturate easily safe important population change, which would be hard to do, would it be only politically)
 
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It also depends on, whether one looks at Valois-Burgundy of Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, Philip the Good, Charles the Bold or Mary the Rich.

In case of the last three and especially in case of Mary, Burgundy had become multi-lingual, culturally in broader terms is a bit more tricky.

For instance Flanders and Brabant both had Dutch speaking (local dialect) majority, but also had Romance speaking minorities. Also IIRC the Picard dialect may initially have been more influential than the dialect of Isle de France. In fact the estates of Brabant did demand that their duke could speak Dutch (by which they meant Brabantian).

By the time of Mary the Rich, most of the French fiefs were seized, which thus lead to Burgundy becoming de facto less French. However the court remained Francophone and nobles and clergy were or became mostly bilingual.
AFAIK there also is an anecdote that Mary taught Maximilian Dutch and he taught her German.
 
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