ITT: History's Greatest LARPers

>"Holy"
>"Roman"
>"Empire"

Why did Germany develop into a huge amount of tiny fiefdoms before unification? France, UK, never had anything like this.

>France, UK, never had anything like this

This.
Flanders had a lot of wars with the French king and was basically independent from the start.

>WE WUZ ALEXANDER N SHIET

...

Certain of the British Raj
>"God's blood, he's gone native!"

Still nothing like Germany. Some German fiefdoms were the size of a town or city. Also, France was centralized in the Middle Ages (IIRC), whereas Germany remained like in OP pic until Bismarck.

The small principalities were not that much of a problem for the HRE since they were dependent on the empire. The problem were the larger states like Bavaria or Brandenburg/Prussia who were powerful enough to follow their own political goals independently and often against the emperor.

>France was centralized in the Middle Ages

The process was not finished until the early modern era. Right at the end of the Middle Ages, Burgundy emerged as a powerful rival on (partly) French territory; luckily for the French king, Burgundy was dealt with by the Swiss in alliance with the Habsburgs. France centralized early, but they used to be fairly decentralized, which was my point.

>remained like in OP pic until Bismarck

Most of the smaller principalities lost sovereignity in 1803.

I think a non meme answer would be someone like Tamerlane