Ludwig II: The Swan King and His Fairy-Tale Castles

King Ludwig II of Bavaria bankrupted himself building fantastical castles like Neuschwanstein while his kingdom was absorbed into a unified German Empire he despised.This episode covers his cold childhood, his lavish patronage of Richard Wagner, Bismarck's secret bribery through the Guelph Fund, his deposition on questionable insanity grounds, and his mysterious death at Lake Starnberg.The Lohengrin swan-knight obsession rooted at HohenschwangauFunding Wagner's operas and the Bayreuth FestspielhausNeuschwanstein, Linderhof, and the electrically lit Venus GrottoThe 1886 insanity declaration by doctors who never examined himThe unexplained deaths of Ludwig and Dr. Gudden in the lake