If you've ever visited the magnificent Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, you were told

the legend of Mad King Ludwig, who built the castle, and who was found drowned in a nearby

lake. It is supposedly an unsolved death, but today we're going to set the tourist

stories aside and look at the historical facts. Was it a suicide? A murder? A murder of

political convenience. The death of Mad King Ludwig is today on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. The death of Mad King Ludwig.

Although he's best known to most of us as the Mad King who bankrupted his country,

building his extravagant castles, King Ludwig II of Bavaria probably deserved a better

demise than to be found floating face down in a lake. In fact, he never bankrupted his country

at all. He spent only his own fortune and borrowed money on his ostentatious construction

projects, and the evidence suggesting he was mentally ill is controversial at best. He

was his country's greatest patron of the arts, and when his own ministers turned against

him to depose him from the throne, he died quite suddenly in a lake. To this day, the mystery

remains. Was King Ludwig murdered or did he commit suicide to avoid the shame of deposition?

Bavaria, now a state in Germany, was a monarchy from 1806 through the end of World War I. Upon

the death of his father Maximilian II, young Ludwig assumed the throne in 1864 when he was

only 18 years old. Ludwig had never had any interest in matters of state and had never been

particularly close with his father. His loves were art, history, architecture, and music. He was

introverted and avoided public functions. His baptism into politics was one of fire. Bavaria

had an uneasy alliance with Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, and the first years of his

reign were dominated by the war with Napoleon III. He had almost no involvement at all,

preferring instead to build theaters and tour the countryside while war raged elsewhere.

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