Bavaria (The Once and Never Kings)

The Kingdom of Bavaria, Bavaria, is a unitary constitutional monarchy in southeastern Germany, in the Holy Roman Empire. It borders many Imperial states, including Passau, Burgau, Ansbach, Bayreuth, and Salzburg, among others.

History
Bavaria was established as a larger stem duchy of the Kingdom of Germany in 907, though the Bavarii tribes inhabited the region and had several states in the region prior. The stem duchy originally administered modern day Austria, but its lands were lost to split inheritance and conquest.

Duke Otto III inherited the duchy in 1180, bringing the Wittelsbachs to power. The Wittelsbach dynasty also extended its reach to the Palatinate, Brandenburg, and Holland.

Holland would be split away, and eventually inherited by the Luxembourgs. Brandenburg would be bought directly by that same family after years of lackluster rule. Bavaria and the Palatinate would separate in the mid fourteenth century. Bavaria itself would be snubbed for an electorate in favor of the Palatinate, who was determined to be the "senior" branch.

Bavaria itself would be divided into four cadet duchies: Bayern-Ingolstadt, Bayern-Munchen, Bayern-Lanshut, and Bayern-Staubing. The four separated families would clash as successive dukes fought to establish their own dominance. It would be Bayern-Munchen, however, under the 1697-1742 rule of the charismatic Duke Rudolph III that finally united the disparate duchies in the lengthy Bavarian Unification Wars.

Rudolph III immediately abolished the separate ducal titles, consolidating and centralizing the state around Munich. He also managed to get the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Rudolph II, to declare Bavaria inseparable, similar to the privileges of the electors.

Bavaria only joined the Napoleonic Wars during the War of the Fourth Coalition, in 1854. As retaliation, Napoleone Bounaparte invaded it and the other new German members of the Coalition, aided by his Francian puppets. Bavaria would escape concessions, though swaths of the Swiss and Rhineland states were annexed by Bounaparte. Bavarian troops were eventually part of the allied army that marched on Florence in 1862 and ended his rule.

Bavaria was raised to a Kingdom and a (long overdue, some would say) electorate as a reward for its service. As Bavaria was one of the German states that rejected Lutheranism, Bavaria joined the Catholic Bloc of the electors.