It does not appear that her brother, whose lunatic condition hardly permitted him to assure her the dowry which had been the price of renunciation in the case of her three elder sisters, had obtained that renunciation from her.
The claims of the childless Sibylla as well as those of the Deux-Ponts branch were not destined to be taken into serious consideration.
The real competitors were the Emperor on the one side and the Elector of Brandenburg and the Count-Palatine of Neuburg on the other.
It is not necessary to my purpose to say a single word as to the legal and historical rights of the controversy.

Volumes upon volumes of forgotten lore might be consulted, and they would afford exactly as much refreshing nutriment as would the heaps of erudition hardly ten years old, and yet as antiquated as the title-deeds of the Pharaohs, concerning the claims to the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein.

The fortunate house of Brandenburg may have been right or wrong in both disputes.

It is certain that it did not lack a more potent factor in settling the political problems of the world in the one case any more than in the other.
But on the occasion with which we are occupied it was not on the might of his own right hand that the Elector of Brandenburg relied.

Moreover, he was dilatory in appealing to the two great powers on whose friendship he must depend for the establishment of his claims: the United Republic and the King of France.