Grand duchy

[1] During the 19th century there were as many as 14 grand duchies in Europe at once (a few of which were first created as exclaves of the Napoleonic empire but later re-created, usually with different borders, under another dynasty).

Some of these were sovereign and nominally independent (Baden, Hesse and by Rhine, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Tuscany), some sovereign but held in personal union with larger realms by a monarch whose grand-dukedom was borne as a subsidiary title (Finland, Luxembourg, Transylvania), some of which were client states of a more powerful realm (Cleves and Berg), and some whose territorial boundaries were nominal and the position purely titular (Frankfurt).

He was succeeded on the Dutch throne by his daughter Wilhelmina, but she could not become Grand Duchess of Luxembourg under the semi-Salic law established by the Congress of Vienna.

This resulted in the title of grand duke being bestowed on a distant male cousin of William III, Adolphe, from the elder branch of Nassau-Weilburg (at present Luxembourg-Nassau).

The number of duchies had inflated towards the end of the Middle Ages to an extent that included middle-sized towns or relatively small fiefs, as compared to the national, pre-medieval tribal provinces.

[3] In the early nineteenth century, Napoléon I occasionally used the title "grand duchy" for several French satellite states given to his relatives or generals.

The elevation of these vassals to the title of grand duke was usually accompanied by an expansion of their realms with additional territory gathered at the expense of subdued powers such as Prussia.

Ranking, internationally, no higher than the members of other reigning dynasties whose head held the title of emperor, the usage was an historical anomaly, persisting from the elevation of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy to the tsardom and, later, empire of All Russia, until its collapse in 1917.

), the term "grand prince" was rare or non-existent, used to refer to some rulers of Transylvania, Russia or Tuscany prior to the 19th century.

Emerging from the Middle Ages, the rulers of Ruthenia (modern Ukraine), Lithuania and some Eastern Slavic states, as well as other Eastern European princes and later Russian dynasts, were referred to by the title Великий Князь (Veliky Knyaz, German: Großfürst), whose literal English translation is "grand prince" rather than "grand duke".

After the dissantigration process occurred in the state, different members of the Rurik Dynasty in the northern principalities could compete for the title of Grand Prince of Kiev.