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Eventually the same forces that made trouble for the Frankish Empire bothered the Eastern half. Everyone still divided up the land when they died, leading to all sorts of trouble, and there was hardly any post-Roman glue to stick things together. (France eventually decided to make Roman-style primogeniture the rule for royalty and this really cut down on civil wars. They also adopted a system of written law to sort out land disputes). Everybody was Catholic, and Latin language and culture provided a common ground for the educated. (France as a nation remained a dicey concept until the Hundred Year's War taught them the value of Nationalism and centralization, but existed as a cultural entity by 900).

Things were messier in the HRE: No Roman roads for communication and many smaller tribal territories remained culturally and sometimes linguistically and religiously distinct. A lot of them were converted at sword point under Carloman and Charlemagne and trouble continued from people who were not entirely happy with Frankish overlordship or the conversion from paganism or other brands of Christianity. They also had to cope with periodic invasion from the East and border wars in the West.

Eventually, the attempt to improve stability combined with the decentralizing attempts to maintain local control by the Lords to make a unique system. Basically, they ended up as an oligarchic confederation. The local lords had absolute control over the people under them, but in case of invasion or Rebellion could call on help from the rulers of their area. These rulers ran what amounted to petty kingdoms, which were also close to autonomous. (Modern names like Bavaria, Prussia, etc. refer to this semi-autonomous duchies.) They waged war against each other, etc. At the top were the "Electors." These were the big fish who picked the Holy Roman Emperor from among their families. Initially, the Emperor job moved from family to family in rotation, but it tended to concentrate over time. This system was complicated by various towns owned by the Church or with independent charters. In the Middle Ages proper, this was basically how it worked.

Eventually, The concentration of Emperorship into one family's hands led them to play the same marriage games as the rest of Europe by the Early Modern Period. This is how "bloody" Mary of England's husband could be a Spaniard who ruled what would one day be Germany + Spain + bits of Italy and be fighting a War against France in the low countries.