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Former monarchies of Europe

  • Carolingian EmpireThe Carolingian Empire began with a scene that had not occurred for centuries: on Christmas Day in the year 800, Pope Leo III placed a crown on the head of…
  • Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire, at its peak, covered roughly 5.5 million square kilometers, making it the largest empire of its time.
  • Austrian EmpireThe Austrian Empire began with a stroke of the pen in 1804, when Holy Roman Emperor Francis II declared himself Emperor of Austria, creating an entirely new…
  • Crown of AragonThe Crown of Aragon began with a monk who never wanted to be a king. Ramiro II, raised in the Monastery of Saint Pons de Thomières as a Benedictine, was the…
  • Kingdom of EnglandThe Kingdom of England was born on the 12th of July 927, when the monarchs of Britain gathered at Eamont Bridge, in what is now Cumbria, to recognise a…
  • MerciaMercia was an early medieval English kingdom whose name meant, literally, "boundary folk" - people defined by the edges they occupied.
  • NorthumbriaNorthumbria was a medieval English kingdom that survived from 654 to 1066 AD, straddling what is now Northern England and Southern Scotland.
  • Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)The Kingdom of Italy was born on the 17th of March 1805, not from centuries of unified rule, but from a single decision by one man who was already emperor of…
  • Kingdom of PrussiaThe Kingdom of Prussia was proclaimed on the 18th of January 1701, when Frederick III of Brandenburg crowned himself "King in Prussia" in an act that…
  • Kingdom of RomaniaOn the 24th of January 1859, Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected prince of both Moldavia and Wallachia. This event united two distinct territories under a single…
  • Crown of CastileIn 1230, Ferdinand III stepped onto the vacant throne of León to claim a crown that had been his father's. He inherited Castile from his mother Queen…
  • Kingdom of SerbiaOn the 6th of March 1882, Milan I stood before a crowd in Belgrade and accepted the crown that transformed Serbia from a principality into a kingdom.
  • Kingdom of FranceThe Kingdom of France began not with a crown placed on a French king's head, but with a treaty signed in 843 that divided a dying empire.
  • Ancient CarthageAncient Carthage was once the richest city in the western Mediterranean, a Phoenician-descended power that controlled the coasts of North Africa, Iberia, and…
  • Roman KingdomThe Roman Kingdom was built on a river crossing. Around 753 BC, a small cluster of settlements appeared on the Palatine Hill above a ford across the Tiber in…
  • Kingdom of Great BritainThe Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on the 1st of May 1707, not with a battle or a conquest, but with a signature.
  • Grand Duchy of LithuaniaThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at its height, stretched from the shores of the Baltic Sea all the way to the Black Sea. By 1440 it had grown into the largest…
  • Mongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire in history. At its height it stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe, reaching north into…
  • Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary was, for roughly half a century, the second-largest country in Europe by area, surpassed only by Russia.
  • German EmpireOn the 18th of January 1871, while German armies still besieged Paris, William I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of…
  • First Bulgarian EmpireThe First Bulgarian Empire was born from a humiliation so complete that the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor could barely write it down.
  • Habsburg monarchyThe Habsburg monarchy began with a single castle in present-day Switzerland, built by a man named Radbot of Klettgau in the late 10th century.
  • Kingdom of GreeceThe Kingdom of Greece was born from a secret society formed in 1814 by three men who met in Odesa. Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios…
  • Duchy of OldenburgThe first known count of Oldenburg was Elimar I, who died in 1108. His descendants served as vassals to the dukes of Saxony while occasionally rebelling…
  • First French EmpireThe First French Empire was proclaimed on the 18th of May 1804, when the French Senate granted Napoleon Bonaparte the title Emperor of the French.
  • Empire of ThessalonicaModern scholars use the phrase Empire of Thessalonica to describe a specific Greek state that existed between 1224 and 1246.
  • Kingdom of ItalyOn the 17th of March 1861, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy in Turin. This event marked the birth of a new state from decades of…
  • Latin EmpireThe Latin Empire began with a coronation inside the Hagia Sophia on the 16th of May 1204. Baldwin IX of Flanders, a Crusader from western Europe, sat where…
  • Maritime republicsIn the year 849, a coalition of Italian coastal cities sailed out to the port of Ostia and shattered a Saracen invasion fleet.
  • Archduchy of AustriaThe year 1156 marked a turning point when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa issued the Privilegium Minus. This document detached the region from the Duchy of…
  • Lordship of IrelandThe Lordship of Ireland began with a crown that was never placed on anyone's head. In 1185, Henry II of England ordered a crown made of gold and peacock…
  • Gallic EmpireIn 260, a Roman general named Postumus besieged his own emperor's son inside the city of Colonia Agrippina, had the boy and his guardian put to death, and…
  • Hospitaller MaltaIn 1530, Emperor Charles V handed the islands of Malta and Gozo to the Order of St. John. This transfer followed a seven-year period where the Knights…
  • Kingdom of WestphaliaThe Kingdom of Westphalia lasted only six years, from 1807 to 1813, yet it introduced the first modern written constitution in Germany and abolished serfdom…
  • Kingdom of PortugalThe Kingdom of Portugal was a monarchy that endured from the mid-12th century all the way to the early 20th century, outlasting empires and dynasties across…
  • Kingdom of SardiniaThe Kingdom of Sardinia traces its origins to a single political transaction in 1297, when Pope Boniface VIII created a fictional realm on paper and offered…
  • DaciaDacia, the ancient land whose core lay in what is now Transylvania, once stretched from the river Tisza in the west to the Black Sea in the east.
  • Holy Roman EmpireThe Holy Roman Empire was, in the words of the philosopher Voltaire, "in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." That sardonic line has clung to it for…
  • Western Roman EmpireThe Western Roman Empire did not fall in a single dramatic moment. On the 4th of September 476, a Germanic military leader named Odoacer deposed a teenage…
  • ColchisColchis, the ancient Georgian polity that Greek poets called a land of gold, sits at the eastern edge of the Black Sea in what is now western Georgia.
  • United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was born on the 1st of January 1801, stitched together by the Acts of Union after a failed rebellion and a…
  • BadenHermann II of Baden first claimed the title of Margrave of Baden in 1112. This claim marked the beginning of a lineage that traced its roots to the House of…
  • Duchy of MilanThe Duchy of Milan came into being on the 11th of May 1395, when a single document signed in Prague changed the shape of Northern Italy forever.
  • Kingdom of NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples bore an official name that almost nobody used: the Kingdom of Sicily on this side of the lighthouse.
  • Empire of TrebizondIn April 1204, Alexios Komnenos and his brother David marched from Georgia to seize the city of Trebizond. They arrived with troops provided by their aunt…
  • Grand Principality of MoscowMoscow is first mentioned in chronicles under the year 1147, as part of the principality of Rostov-Suzdal. At that point it was a minor settlement on the…
  • Vladimir-SuzdalIn 1169, the city of Kiev was sacked, and the order to do it came from the north. Andrey Bogolyubsky, a prince ruling from the forested lands beyond the…
  • Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was one of the most expansive and enduring political structures the ancient world produced, stretching from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked…
  • Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire began as a single beylik, a small principality founded around 1299 in northwestern Anatolia by a Turkoman tribal leader named Osman I.
  • Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire announced itself to the world on the day the Treaty of Nystad was signed in 1721, when the Governing Senate and Synod bestowed upon Peter…