The Lordship of Schellenberg was purchased by the Counts of Vaduz in 1437 and the two states have been united in fact ever since. After the Swabian War in 1499, both came under Austrian suzerainty. Different dynasties of counts bought and sold them, until their purchase in the early 18th century by the Liechtenstein dynasty, which had been granted princely status in 1706, but which needed to acquire a territory with imperial immediacy in order to vote in the Diet of the Princes of the Empire.