Unnamed German Princelings

In a kind of mock-Homeric simile, the narrator compares the "apostate sons of Beat Four" in Yoknapatawpha who move into Jefferson and marry "a town girl" to the "petty Germanic princelings [who] would come down out of their Brandenburg hills to marry the heiresses to European thrones" (133). The "son of Beat Four" here is named Willy Ingrum, who is the "town marshal" (133). It's not clear if Faulkner is thinking of any specific German noblemen.