A Pfalzgraf or Count Palatine or Palsgrave functioned, especially in medieval times, as the permanent representative ('grafio' =scribe rather than Count) of the Frankish king and later Holy Roman Emperor in a pfalz or palatial domain of the crown, of which there were dozens throughout greater Germany. The monarch and a large court retinue traveled between these, without a real capital; such practice of 'eating his taxes' literally wining and dining was not uncommon in the early feudal times, e.g. in England; travel was often imposed by military and preventive considerations anyhow. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Statue of Charlemagne (also called Karl der Große, Charles the Great) in Frankfurt, Germany. ... A palatinate is an area administered by a count palatine, originally the direct representative of the sovereign but later the hereditary ruler of the territory subject to the crowns overlordship. ...

• In time, particularly during the Holy Roman Empire, like other officials they tended to become hereditary princes of comital rank, often becoming a more independent ruler of a palatinate.

• The Count Palatine of the Rhine and junior branches of his family bore this title.

This page is about the Germanic empire. ... The term prince (from the Latin princeps), for a member of the highest aristocracy, has fundamentally different meanings - one generic, and several types of titles the female form is princess // Abstract notion The original but least common use is as a GENERIC (descriptive, not formal) term -originating in the application... A palatinate is an area administered by a count palatine, originally the direct representative of the sovereign but later the hereditary ruler of the territory subject to the crowns overlordship. ... The Rhenish Palatinate (Rheinpfalz, sometimes Lower Palatinate or Niederpfalz) occupies rather more than a quarter of the German Bundesland (federal state) of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) and contains the towns of Ludwigshafen, Kaiserslautern, Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, Pirmasens, Landau and Speyer. ...

See also

• Earl palatine
• Lord palatine