The Fairy Tale King

A Brief Look at 'Mad King Ludwig' of Bavaria, the so called Swan King

King Ludwig II (b. 1845) reigned from 1864 to 1886 and became one of Bavaria’s most famous monarchs. He became King at 18 and took the wrong side in a war between Austria and Prussia two years later, but still joined the new German Empire in 1871 after siding with Prussia in a war against France in 1870. It was a rocky start to his reign and he lost many of his powers as king. It never got much better for Ludwig.

He retreated from politics in Bavaria and became obsessed with his own projects. Most famously, these included his castles. He grew up in ‘Hohenschwangau’, a castle that we first have records of from the 13th century and was restored by Ludwig’s father Maximillian II between 1833-1837.

It has a romantic air to it- especially because it was originally the home of an order of knights. Ludwig was obsessed with the Middle Ages and the romantic myths that surrounded them; the stories of brave knights and princesses in towers.

This is clear when you see the most famous castle he built which allegedly was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle: Neuschwanstein.

The soaring towers and seemingly gravity-defying keep still amaze people today, and with good reason. It was not designed by an architect, but a set designer, and Ludwig was largely influenced by the operas of Richard Wagner.

This can be seen throughout the castle, but especially in the ‘grotto’- an artificial cave built into a room, based off a scene in Wagner’s Tannhäuser.

Neuschwanstein and Ludwig’s many other building projects eventually bankrupted the Bavarian monarchy, and with it Bavaria itself. The government therefore took the reasonable measure of having him deposed and declared insane in 1886, and from then he was to be held at Berg Palace. However, his body was found three days later in a lake, along with the body of his doctor. Whether he committed suicide or was murdered is still unknown and is unlikely to ever be solved (considering it happened over a century ago).

All of this- his childlike obsession with the Medieval period, his reclusiveness, and his mysterious death- combine to give Ludwig II the sort of mythical reputation normally enjoyed by monarchies of much earlier periods than the 19th century.

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