As after the Landshut War of Succession primogeniture was established, there could only be one Duke of Bavaria anymore, resulting in the unprecedented decision to create a title of Duke in Bavaria for the rest of the family, which all members of the House took for themselves, even the older Palatine branch – the other major Wittelsbach possession.
After the death of Charles Theodore, who had unified Bavaria with the Palatinate and the other major possessions of Jülich and Berg in his person, two cadet branches were surviving: one headed by Maximilian I Joseph, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken, the other by William, Count Palatine of Gelnhausen, and both Zweibrücken and Gelnhausen were occupied by the French, which might explain why the custom was abandoned to name cadet branches by the title of their cadet possessions no matter how small.
His grandson Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria purchased Possenhofen Castle on Lake Starnberg which became his major residence and where his children, notably the later Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Queen of Hungary ("Sisi"), were brought up.
Luitpold Emanuel Ludwig Maria, Duke in Bavaria (1890-1973), the last issue of the in Bavaria junior branch, sold Possenhofen and Schloss Biederstein in Munich in order to finance his late romantic Schloss Ringberg, which he eventually left as inheritance to the Max Planck Society.
His cousin Duke Ludwig Wilhelm in Bavaria, also childless, in 1965 adopted a grandson of his sister Marie Gabrielle, who had married Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, Prince Max Emanuel of Bavaria of the senior royal branch, who inherited the estates at Banz, Tegernsee and Kreuth from his uncle and, from his father's side, Wildenwart Castle near Frasdorf, which had been purchased by Francis V, Duke of Modena in 1862 who left it to his niece, the Bavarian Queen Maria Theresa.