Margrave

Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or a kingdom.

Thereafter, those domains (originally known as marks or marches, later as margraviates or margravates) were absorbed into larger realms or the titleholders adopted titles indicative of full sovereignty.

The margrave maintained the greater armed forces and fortifications required for repelling invasion, which increased his political strength and independence relative to the monarch.

The Spanish March was most important during the early stages of the peninsular Reconquista of Iberia: ambitious margraves based in the Pyrenees took advantage of the disarray in Muslim Al-Andalus to extend their territories southward, leading to the establishment of the Christian kingdoms that would become unified Spain in the fifteenth century.

In an evolution similar to the rises of dukes, landgraves, counts palatine, and Fürsten (ruling princes), these margraves became substantially independent rulers of states under the nominal overlordship of the Holy Roman Emperor.

[3] But their father had allowed its use for his morganatic children at his own court in Karlsruhe from his assumption of the grand ducal crown in 1806, simultaneously according to the princely title to the dynastic sons of his first marriage.

[3] Likewise, Margrave of Meissen is used as a title of pretence by the claimant to the Kingdom of Saxony since the death in exile of its last monarch, King Fredrick Augustus III, in 1932.

In Germany and Austria, where titles were borne by all descendants in the male line of the original grantee, men and women alike, each daughter was a Markgräfin as each son was a Markgraf.