#tl;dr: titles are a social construction nobility and royalty aren't actually real

[archduchessofnowhere]

Hi! I’m one of your mutuals, but I’m asking this question anonymously because I believe it’s the epitome of dumbnesses 😂 Why the title “in Bavaria” and not “of Bavaria”? This “in” is having me all sorts of confused

Hello! JKSDKFJKGD it's not a dumb question at all! It can be quite confusing, especially because most Sisi biographies just don't explain what the difference is. Or worse, mistranslate the title (this happens almost always in Spanish translations sigh).

I'd be lying if I said that I understand this in detail, but basically the title dates back to the 16th century, however it only started to have relevance after the death of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, in 1799. Since he had no legitimate children his heir was his first cousin once removed Max Joseph, the future first King of Bavaria. At the time of the elector's death, there were only two surviving branches of the House of Wittelsbach: the Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken, headed by future King Max, and the Birkenfeld-Gelnhausen, headed by Max's distant cousin and also brother-in-law Wilhelm.

So when Max became Elector in 1799 he recognized Wilhelm as the head of the only branch of the family and they agreed that the Wittelsbach lands would be indivisible. As Elector, Max was the Duke of Bavaria (Herzog von Bayern), and since there could be only one Duke of Bavaria at a time, he gave Wilhelm the title of Duke in Bavaria (Herzog in Bayern). Basically what this distinction denotes is that this branch doesn't rule over any territory, they're dukes and duchesses in Bavaria, not of Bavaria. Duke Wilhelm was Duke of Berg for three years until Napoleon gave the duchy to Joachim Murat and that's it, that's the only territory he was ever in charge of. When Wilhelm died he left his only son and heir Pius August no land to rule over.

But no need to get sad about our territory-less side branch: they were loaded. According to historian Martina Winkelhofer, the Dukes in Bavaria actually had more money than the King. This is why King Max thought it would be great to marry one of his daughters to Wilhelm's grandson Max: so the money stayed in the family. Princess Ludovika married down in title, true, but up in fortune.

In the Wikipedia article of the Dukes in Bavaria it says that King Max gave them the title of Royal Highnesses after 1799, which isn't correct. The agreement was that they would receive the title after Duke Max and Ludovika's wedding. But when they married King Max had already died and the new king, Ludovika's half-brother Ludwig backed down and just… not gave him the title (the reason seems to be that Ludwig just freaking hated his brother-in-law lol). Duke Max and his children only became Royal Highnesses in 1845, when Elisabeth was already eight-years-old.

So Elisabeth's position when she became empress was special, because her title itself was special. On the one hand it was a minor title that basically meant "these guys don't rule anywhere", on the other hand the title also meant that they were closely related to the royal branch. She wasn't a nobody: she was the granddaughter, niece, and cousin of the king of Bavaria, and she grew up in close contact with her royal relatives. But the position of her family was special: they had no territory to rule over, and because Duke Max retired from the Munich society to live a bohemian life, his family had nothing to do on an official level.

In a way, Elisabeth's situation reminds me a bit to her Leuchtenberg cousins, who were also in a limbo of "we are from the ancient house of Wittelsbach but our dad's title is weird and technically doesn't mean anything" (though Elisabeth and her siblings' position was far more stable and secure than their Beauharnais cousins). Ludovika and her sister Auguste in fact were close despite their twenty-years age gap, so I wonder if "our children are royalty but in a strange way" was one of the things they bonded over.

To finish this ask, a trivia: the dukes in Bavaria branch became extinct in 1973, and today's living Wittelsbachs all descend from the royal branch. The last Duke in Bavaria was Ludwig Wilhelm, son of Karl Theodor "Gackl", Elisabeth's favorite brother. He had no children so in 1965 he adopted his grand-nephew Max Emanuel (grandson of his sister Duchess Marie Gabrielle in Bavaria and Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria), who uses the title of Duke in Bavaria as his last name ever since.

I hope you find my answer helpful (and that I didn't confuse more)!