Some maintain dynastic traditions that are reflected in roles they still play in high society networks, philanthropy and Germany's version of local "squirearchy" visibility.
At first, the highest nobles – de facto equal to kings and emperors – were the Dukes of the stem duchies: Later, the precedence shifted to the prince-electors, the first order amongst the princes of the empire, regardless of the actual title attached to the fief.
In the same period (the Early Middle Ages) also many Italian territories under Byzantine suzerainty (in the Exarchate of Ravenna) were organized in duchies, and notably the following ones: The first four were Tyrrhenian port cities and survived as semi-autonomous states until the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries.
As the name suggests, these were duchies, but forming an exclusive order of 'great fiefs' (twenty among some 2200 noble title creations), a college nearly comparable in status to the original anciennes pairies in the French kingdom.
Since Napoleon I would not go back on the Revolution's policy of abolishing feudalism in France, but did not want these grandees to fall under the 'majorat' system in France either, he chose to create them outside the French "metropolitan" empire, notably in the following Italian satellite states, and yet all awarded to loyal Frenchmen, mainly high military officers: In the Kingdom of Italy, in personal union with France, personally held by Napoleon I: In the Principality of Lucca and Piombino, only Massa et Carrara: for Régnier, judge (extinguished 1962); Massa and Carrara were separated from the kingdom of Italy by article 8 of the decree of March 30, 1806 and united to the principality of Lucca-Piombino by another decree of March 30, 1806.