When he came to power, Charles William Frederick ruled as a typical absolute monarch with a luxurious court life.

He left his heir Charles Alexander a total debt of 2.3 million Reichsthaler, and he spent 10% of the state budget on hunting.

He had 56 churches and many palaces built, among them a building in Triesdorf for his falcons, his greatest passion, on which he spent more than a half million guilders between 1730 and 1748.

Charles William Frederick married Princess Friederike Luise of Prussia (1714–1784), sixth child and second surviving daughter of King Frederick William I of Prussia and his wife, Princess Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.

Both illegitimate sons, Friedrich Karl (1734–1796) and Friedrich Ferdinand Ludwig (1748–1811), and daughters Wilhelmine Eleonore (1743–1768) and Louise Charlotte (1746–1747) all married into the German nobility and received palaces and the hereditary titles Freiherren and Freiinen von Falkenhausen.