Talk:Imperial Count

HansM (talk) 21:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The meaning of "fractional vote" should be clarified. Is it the same as or different from a direct or normal vote, for example? ZFT (talk) 20:52, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Imperial Count

It has been alleged on my talk page, insofar as I can understand the argument, that this article has been written in violation of NPOV because in the description of the different categories of nobles who belonged to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire -- which ceased to exist in 1806 -- there is a bias which implies that Imperial counts were less fully participants of or integral to the Empire's power structure than the electors and Imperial princes. If that is the argument being put forth, although I did not write that perspective into the article, I disagree. I think that the article documents that the emperor, the electors (lay and ecclesiastical), the princes and the counts had distinct rights and privileges, which are accurately described in the article. It is a fact that Imperial counts did not have voting power in the Diet equal to that of the princes, who did not have voting power equal to that of the electors, who did not have power equal to that of the emperor. It is no insult or bias to indicate that in this pyramid, whereas each Imperial prince who held a Reichsstand had at least one vote, exercised individually or shared with members of his dynasty, counts with a Reichsstand exercised only a fraction of a vote as a member of one of the four regionally-based Grafenbanken. Many Imperial counts had an equal right to exercise a fraction of a vote on these Counts' Benches, thus their power in the Diet was always less than that of any voting prince. Moreover, many families which were nominally "Imperial Counts" did not possess an immediate fief and/or were not entitled to even a fractional vote in the Diet (and therefore held no Reichsstand): they were titularly but not substantively "imperial", since they did not partake in the Empire's governance through the Diet. Since this is about relative status in a realm that was wiped of the face of Europe more than two centuries ago, I cannot imagine that anyone would today regard acknowledging the power discrepancy between princes and counts as disparaging (except perhaps a modern-day descendant of an Imperial count). FactStraight (talk) 09:53, 6 April 2016 (UTC)