The Holy Roman Empire was a claimed “successor state” to Charlemagne's Carolingian empire along with France and several other realms. The empire was a lot larger than modern day Germany and included the modern day countries Austria, the low countries, large parts of Eastern France, Northern Italy, Slovenia, parts of the northern Baltic, and Switzerland. Although the main culture was Germanic, this was not necessarily a single cultural identity and there were large differences in local dialect. Additionally many foreign cultures had influence on the culture and language of the border territories (France, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Hungary). The structure of the nobility is complicated in that many different titles were used across the empire and do not necessarily mean the same thing in differ