roi de Prusse

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King in Prussia (German: König in Preußen) was a title used by the Prussian kings (also in personal union Electors of Brandenburg) from 1701 to 1772. Subsequently, they used the title King of Prussia (König von Preußen). The House of Hohenzollern ruled Brandenburg as Prince-Electors, and were subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor. Since 1618, the Electors of Brandenburg had also ruled the Duchy of Prussia, which lay outside the empire, in a personal union. The dual state was known unofficially as Brandenburg-Prussia. Originally the dukes of Prussia held the fief as vassals of the King of Poland, until the Treaties of Labiau (1656) and Bromberg (1657), with which Frederick William, the Great Elector, achieved full sovereignty from the Polish Crown. His son, Elector Frederick III, then sought to show his greatness by adopting the title king. At the time, the only royal titles within the Holy Roman Empire were those of King of the Romans (held by the Holy Roman Emperor or his heir apparent) and King of Bohemia (held more or less continuously since the 16th century by the Holy Roman Emperors in a de facto personal union). However, Prussia lay outside the empire, and the Hohenzollerns were fully sovereign over it. Frederick thus argued that German law of the time allowed him to rule Prussia as a kingdom, outside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Crown Treaty of 16 November 1700, in return for Hohenzollern assistance in the War of the Spanish Succession and support for the Habsburg candidate in the subsequent imperial election, Emperor Leopold I allowed Frederick to crown himself "King in Prussia". The title "King in Prussia" reflected the legal fiction that Frederick was sovereign only over his, formerly Polish, Duchy of Prussia. In Brandenburg and other Hohenzollern domains within the...