My Best Guess at the Grand Est and Possible Improvements to Alsace

First of all, here is my best guesses at what each tag in the moden Grand Est region of France is meant to represent. Special thanks to u/Brennanthenerd for tracing the map, which I used as a basis for my own here. Any tags that I am unsure of have been marked with a "?" so feel free to speak up if you think you have a better idea about what some of these might be. I am very happy with how Paradox have represented most of this region, though there is one spot in particular that I think deserves some further attention, and that is Alsace.

A few days ago I made a comment in this thread in which I mentioned that the Alsatian political borders as seen in Tinto Talks #10 are inaccurate. Namely, the Project Caesar map in its current form shows Alsace as more-or-less split between the Landraviates of Upper and Lower Alsace (the former being a possession of the Habsburg Dukes of Austria, held in part through a personal union with the County of Ferrette/Pfirt). However, by the 14th Century, the Landgraviate of Lower Alsace had virtually ceased to exist, and in 1375 the position was granted to the Prince-Bishopric of Strasbourg, the most powerful landholding entity within the territory of the landgraviate. The Free City of Strasbourg (as well as the rest of Alsace's Free Cities), having relatively recently fought and won a war of independence against the Prince-Bishopric (the bishop’s residence moved to Saverne, though he retained his title), is also conspicuously absent despite similar circumstances being accurately modeled elsewhere in the game.

This map shows a more realistic representation of Alsatian landholdings in 1337, with some notable omissions. Notably, the County of Rappolstein (Ribeaupierre in French) has been folded into the Austrian landgraviate (the Rappolsteins were close allies of the von Habsburgs, their vassals in all but name), and the Ochsenstein Barony has been shown somewhat dubiously as a part of the Landgraviate of Lower Alsace (formerly the Landgraves of Lower Alsace, the Ochsensteins acquired many estates in the region through this post, though by 1337 the family had lost the landgraviate and was in decline). Additionally, while Alsace was home to nearly a dozen free cities (most of which went on to form an alliance/confederation known as the “Decapole” in 1354 with the notable exception of Strasbourg), I have only shown a handful of these for the sake of simplicity. Naturally, these borders are highly granular and virtually impossible to get pixel-perfect (even this map, while a massive improvement over the current Project Caesar map, does not do this), and so I want to clarify that I do not in any way expect Paradox/Tinto to actually implement this map in particular. Rather, I have included it to illustrate some of the complexities of the political situation in Alsace at the time, and to show how it might be simplified in subsequent maps.

The third map shows a basic simplification of the first, in which the Landgraviate of Lower Alsace has been folded into its respective successors and the County of Ferrette, held in personal union by the Austrian Habsburgs, is shown as a part of their domain, effectively bringing them to their borders in Project Caesar (alternatively, I wouldn't mind if the whole of Upper Alsace was shown as the County of Ferrette/Pfirt held in a Personal Union by the Austrian Habsburgs). However, this map is clearly still too granular, with many locations that are too small to reasonably implement.

In the fourth map the borders of each tag have been simplified and adjusted as needed to bring them more in-line with what might be expected from Project Caesar’s locations (as based on the single location held by the nearby Free City of Basel). Additionally, the free cities have been combined into a single tag, “The Decapole” (based out of the Free City of Haguenau) for the sake of simplicity. The expansion of the middle-location of the Decapole has the fun side-effect of bringing the remaining Alsatian free cities under the control of a more-accurate tag, and thus I quite like this solution. If I had to choose, I would say that this is probably my favorite map.

This final map shows only the changes that I consider most important: the inclusion of the Free City of Strasbourg and the exclave of the Prince-Bishopric of Strasbourg that stretched across the front of the Vosges from about Eguisheim in the north to Soultz in the south (most of this territory was inherited by the Prince-Bishopric following the extinction of the noble House of Eguisheim-Dabo in the 13th Century, and should thus be a core territory of the Prince-Archbishopric by 1337). Meanwhile, the Decapole has been divided up among its neighbors to best fit the current borders, and the small Barony of Fleckenstein has been combined with the more historically noteworthy Barony of Lichtenberg. While the prior map, with these minor tags represented, is my preferred choice, this map captures the most important territorial changes I believe should be made.

I'll end by saying that I'm far from an expert on medieval Alsace, and that most of what I know came from a few months of less-than-academically rigorous research for a personal project that involved mapping landholdings in 14th Century France. As such, if anyone has anything to add to what I've shown here, or any suggestions of their own, feel free to share!