The Luitpoldings were a medieval dynasty which ruled the German stem duchy of Bavaria from some time in the late ninth century off and on until 985.
The descent of the East Frankish Luitpoldings has not been conclusively established. The progenitor of the family Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria possibly was a relative of the Early medieval Huosi noble family and maybe related to the Imperial Carolingian dynasty by Emperor Arnulf's mother Liutswind. In 893 Arnulf appointed him margrave in Carinthia and Pannonia, succeeding the Wilhelminer margrave Engelschalk II. Luitpold was able to enlarge his Bavarian possessions around Regensburg and in the adjacent March of the Nordgau, he became a military leader during the Hungarian invasions and was killed in the 907 Battle of Pressburg.
While the Kingdom of Germany emerged under the rule King Conrad I and his successors of the royal Ottonian dynasty, Luitpold's son and heir Arnulf the Bad, backed by the local nobility, adopted the Bavarian ducal title, reorganised the defence against the Hungarian invaders and, according to the contemporary Annales iuvavenses, built up a king-like position at his Regensburg residence. He inevitably interfered with the Ottonian King Henry I of Germany, whose rule he finally acknowledged in 921, reserving numerous privileges for himself. Given a free hand, he campaigned the lands of the Přemyslid duke Wenceslaus of Bohemia and in 933/34 even invaded the Kingdom of Italy, in order to obtain the Iron Crown of Lombardy for his son Eberhard, though to no avail.