The iron-rich Alpine duchy raised from the March of Styria by Frederick Barbarossa in 1180; briefly its own state under the last Otakar, then an Austrian and Habsburg land, and from 1379 the senior member of the separately-ruled Inner Austrian bloc governed from Graz.
Passed by the 1186 Georgenberg Pact to the Babenberg dukes of Austria on Ottokar IV's death in 1192, then to the Habsburgs after the Battle on the Marchfeld in 1278/1282; separated again from Austria by the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg as the core of Inner Austria under the Leopoldian line at Graz, reunited under Ferdinand II in 1619, and ended as an imperial estate with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 (continuing as an Austrian crown land to 1918).
The standard scholarly treatment of Inner Austria as a separately-governed Habsburg bloc, including the Graz court, the Styrian estates and the Counter-Reformation under Charles II and Ferdinand II - directly on this record's distinct-rule window.
Covers Lower Styria (Stajerska), the Slovene-speaking half of the duchy, which no Austrian-centred survey treats properly.