[1] His father converted to his mother's Roman Catholic faith shortly after his birth, he and his siblings being raised in that denomination.

He ceded to his younger brother Maximilian Joseph the County of Rappoltstein in 1776, having inherited it when their father died in 1767.

Moreover, she wanted to strengthen Austria's alliance with the House of Bourbon by marrying a daughter to Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, a grandson of the French king, Louis XV.

The War of the Bavarian Succession was resolved without prolonged fighting; Charles Theodore succeeded in all of Bavaria except for the district east of the Inn River, known as the Innviertel, assigned to Austria by the Treaty of Teschen (May 1779).

A second attempt to make the exchange in 1784 was also opposed by Charles August, again with Prussian support, and also failed.

[1] Upon the death of Charles II August the title of duke of Zweibrücken was inherited by his brother Maximilian, future king of Bavaria, who reunited the long separate Wittelsbach holdings.