Duchy of Cleves in the context of "William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg"

The United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg was a territory in the Holy Roman Empire between 1521 and 1614, formed from the personal union of the duchies of Jülich, Cleves and Berg.

The name was resurrected after the Congress of Vienna for the province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg of the Kingdom of Prussia between 1815 and 1822. Its territory is today split between the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Dutch province of Gelderland.

Brandenburg–Prussia (German: Brandenburg-Preußen; Low German: Brannenborg-Preußen) is the historiographic denomination for the early modern realm of the Brandenburgian Royal dynasty of the House of Hohenzollern between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession upon the latter's extinction in the male line in 1618.

Another consequence of the intermarriage between the nobility was the acquisition / incorporation of the lands far to the west of Brandenburg–Prussia located in western Germany of the Holy Roman Empire (A.D. c. 800 / 962 to 1806), and situated in the lower Rhenish / Rhine River of the principalities of the Duchy of Cleves, County of Mark and County of Ravensberg after the signing and agreements in the Treaty of Xanten in 1614.

Kleve (German pronunciation: [ˈkleːvə] ; traditional English: Cleves /kliːvz/ KLEEVZ; Dutch: Kleef [ˈkleːf] ; French: Clèves [klɛv]; Spanish: Cléveris; Latin: Clivia; Low Rhenish: Kleff) is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Cleves was capital of a county and later a duchy. Today, Cleves is the capital of the district of Kleve in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The city is home to one of the campuses of the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.

The Lower Rhine region or Niederrhein (German pronunciation: [ˈniːdɐˌʁaɪn] ) is a region around the Lower Rhine section of the river Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, between approximately Oberhausen and Krefeld in the East and the Dutch border around Kleve in the West. As the region can be defined either geographically, linguistically, culturally, or by political, economic and traffic relations throughout the centuries, as well as by more recent political subdivisions, its precise borders are disputable and occasionally may be seen as extending beyond the Dutch border.

A cultural bond of the German Lower Rhine region is its Low Franconian language, specifically the Kleverlandish dialect (German: Kleverländisch, Dutch: Kleverlands), which includes the Dutch dialects just across the border. In the region's southeastern portion Bergish is spoken. Other typicalities of the area include the predominantly Catholic background as well as the Rhenish Carnival tradition.

The Prince-Bishopric of Münster (German: Fürstbistum Münster, Bistum Münster or Hochstift Münster) was a large ecclesiastical principality in the Holy Roman Empire, located in the northern part of today's North Rhine-Westphalia and western Lower Saxony. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, it was often held in personal union with one or more of the nearby ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne, Paderborn, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, and Liège.

Münster was bordered by the United Provinces to the west, by Cleves, Vest Recklinghausen, and Mark in the south, Paderborn and Osnabrück in the east. In the north and north-east it bordered East Frisia, Oldenburg and the Electorate of Hanover (est. 1692).