Very interesting post, though I may want to add a small bit about the dukes. They could be tribal too, or at least the (military) leaders of the tribes, which didn't have kings were referred to as dukes too.
I am not familiar with any examples of that. Can you clarify?
I know the Lombards had dukes from very early on, but these were not "people" titles, they were land titles created during the conquest of Italy, assigning land
areas to military clans ("faras").
Here's a quick roster: the 6th C. Lombard dukes were referred to as the dukes of Forum Julii (Friuli), Trent, Spoleto, Benevento, Verona, Bergamo, Brescia, Milan, Turin, Pavia in the first wave, then the very shortly after, as the conquest deepened, emerge the Dukes of Chiusi, Alba Pompeia, Asti, Ivrea, Novara, Isola San Giuliano/Como, Lodi, Cremona, Tortona, Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, Mantua, Brescello, Vicenza, Treviso, Altino, Feltre, Belluno, Ceneda, Lucca, Florence, Perugia, Fermo and Rimini.
Notice that all are
city names, all (or nearly all) of which have resident bishops. From what I understand, the Lombard dukes themselves did not live in those cities, but in rural clan-based fortresses. Nonetheless, it seems apparent each duke is being assigned an urban Romano-Italian population, organized by the existing Roman land boundaries of church dioceses. I have little doubt (but again, no concrete evidence) that these ducal titles were not Lombard military titles (like '"Gastald" might have been), but overtly Roman titles probably suggested by the resident bishops to enable the Lombards to take over the Roman legal and administrative apparatus to govern the Romano-Italian populations within their regimental fiefs.
(And if the Lombards' Roman successorial pretensions are not sufficiently apparent, remember the first elected Lombard king Authari officially took up the name "Flavius"),
And the original stem dukes in the kingdom of the Eastern Franks have tribal origins too.
True. But you must be careful. Practically most big successor states of the Franks - duchies and kingdoms - have tribal names rather than Roman names. The major reason is because many of these post-Carolingian duchies didn't ever have Roman names as they were never part of the Roman empire. I suppose many of the westerly ones could have used Church provincial names which maintained Roman legacy (Germania, Gallia, Belgica, Raetia, etc.), they nonetheless opted instead for tribal France, Franconia, Burgundy, Swabia/Alemannia, Lotharingia, Normandy, Britanny, etc. Only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are Aquitaine and Tuscany (although it alternated with Lucca), and, at a stretch, Septimania (but that alternated with Gothia) and Italia (alternating with Lombardia).
But Roman legacy names disappeared in good part because of the Carolingian administrative reforms. Charlemagne didn't trust large lords, and, when given the opportunity, broke up all large territories into small counties designated by local area names. The exception were the "marches" and family sub-kingdoms, which were only reluctantly cobbled to facilitate frontier defenses (which is why Aquitainia, Tuscia, Italia & Septimania linger). But for the rest, when the counties re-coalesced into duchies in the late 9th, they weren't beholden to any legacy, and free to choose whatever name they wanted - and many opted to go for their more recent, natural tribal names.
It was natural, because the Carolingian imperium was a fiction; it was really always a Frankish kingdom - of Frankish tribesmen, for Frankish tribesman, forcibly sitting on top of a lot of other subjugated tribes - Lombards, Burgundians, Alemanni, Saxons, Thuringians, etc. - which, in turn, were just military castes sitting on top of a practically enslaved population of Romano-serfs.
And even this must be qualified, because by the 10th C., many (most?) of the so-called Lombard, Saxon, Bavarian, etc. lords and military men were themselves of high Frankish race, the great lords and garrisons of the original tribal stock having been replaced by immigrant Franks during Carolingian times. The original tribesmen by now were either assimilated into the Franks, or fell into common poverty and assimilated into Romano-X pops, or were enslaved and exterminated directly. Little remained of the old tribes themselves, their old racial and clan identity was dissolved; but regional, territorial identity remained, or rather was created, using the old tribal names. The Duke of Bavaria could hardly know which of the men-at-arms in his district were "true" original Bavarians - possibly none. But they are all "Bavarians" now in the brave new duchy.
Why adopt the name of a defeated, lost tribe for yourself? Because that it is how the region was always informally known in Frankish military circles. Frankish lords and garrisons assigned to the east were to subjugate and control the Bavarians, ergo that area was always known as "Bavaria" among the military men, regardless of what the emperor or church or official documents said; those assigned to garrison the north were to control the Saxons, ergo, the area was "Saxony". And so on.
So, yes, there were tribal remnants, but the creation of the duchies was not a tribal resurrection. It was a carving up of military districts by regional (mostly) Frankish strongmen. He was a
Dux, a military lord and governor of a geographic area, ruling over local Franks, Bavarians, Romano-Raetians and Carantanian Slavs. He was not a
Rex, he was not a tribal chief of a defeated, broken, subjugated tribe that practically no longer existed, and probably wasn't even his own.
In fact by the time CK2 starts these were still in a transition towards purely territorial and titular (so having the rank of a duke without a real territorial increase). An example is the dispute between the count of Leuven and count of Limburg regarding, who would be duke of Lower Lorraine, the count of Leuven prevailed (though they would later be made territorial dukes of Brabant and only titular duke of Lower Lorraine (Lothier)), but the ruler of Limburg was allowed the use of the title duke of Limburg.
I've learned there's little in the entire Middle Ages more complicated to sort through than the Low Countries.
But I disagree. There is no such thing as a "duke" without territory. Duke is a territorial office by definition - even if the territory is has a tribal name rather than a Roman legacy one, the title itself is territorial not tribal. A duke rules
everyone in his duchy, not merely his tribesmen (as a "king" would have done).
A Duke without territoral Duchy is as anomalous as a Margrave without a territorial March (of which I can only think of one - the Margrave of Baden, but he once had a march -Verona - and was allowed to keep the dignity as a courtesy after losing it.) In fact, at least in Italy, all post-Carolingian coalescing "duchies" actually started off designating themselves as "Marches" (March of Lombardy, March of Tuscany, March of Spoleto, etc.)
What happened to Limburg was along the lines as what happened to Baden - a courtesy, raising Limburg title to ducal as compensation for their earlier loss of Duchy of LL. It is still territorially defined - the "new" Ducal territory is simply the boundaries of the old County of Limburg.
Another element regarding Bohemia was that Bohemia was the Czech 'stem duchy' and not one of the German stem duchies. You're right that Bohemia did remain a part of the realm/empire (partly caused by translation the term Reich into English, which is broader than the more specific Kaiserreich (which is an empire/realm ruled by an emperor)). Furthermore before the royal title of the ruler of Bohemia became hereditary, some dukes were already granted a personal title of king by the emperor. An afterwards Bohemia became to use a modern term an autonomous region in the empire.
Actually, it was. Arnulf of Carinthia extracted Bohemia from the crumbling Moravian state and formally turned it into a vassal German duchy at the Diet of Augsburg in 895. The hold was occasionally slippery, but it was definitively subdued and integrated into Germany in 1002. It was most definitely a stem duchy of Conrad's definitive Kingdom of Germany.
The personal title of king was allowed to Bohemian duke only twice, AFAIK, in 1158 to Vladislaus II (until his death) and in 1198 to Ottokar I (permanently), both times as courtesies granted by the German monarch, not by the Bohemian estates. I am not aware of prior usages. Yes, it did have a great autonomy.
But Bohemia is still the exception to the rule. And a little deceptive. While it may seem like a king subordinate to an emperor, it is in fact a duchy subordinate to a king. The Kingdom of Bohemia never acquired the independent and equal status to Germany, as Burgundy and Lombardy had, it was not a "fourth kingdom" of the HRE.
