A weird claim. Not only have France and Germany been incredibly dominant throughout history, the Holy Roman Empire was pretty explicitly claimed to be a success

A weird claim. Not only have France and Germany been incredibly dominant throughout history, the Holy Roman Empire was pretty explicitly claimed to be a successor. France is the successor to Charlemagne's empire, who was crowned Emperor of the Romans. I'm curious what claim you think Spain, Great Britain, not to mention Netherlands or the US have to be considered successors of Rome.