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The Old World’s Medieval Untouchables and Other Random Historical Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2020 33 min

Pancho Villa - Mexican Revolution — General Pancho Villa before a firing squad in 1912. Wikimedia

9. Castle Construction Mania

Ludwig II kicked off his mania with the Linderhof Palace, patterned on the Trianon Palace and built between 1869 to 1878. Simultaneously, he began building his most famous project, Neuschwanstein, a fairy tale castle precariously situated on a crag and decorated with scenes from Wagner’s operas. Built from 1869 to 1886, it inspired Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. As that one was being built, Ludwig started an even more ambitious project in 1878, the Herrenchiemsee Palace, a copy of Versailles. It was never completed, because the Mad King went bankrupt.

Between the abandonment of his official duties, profligate spending, and withdrawal into the life of a recluse among other odd behavior, Ludwig’s ministers finally had enough. In 1886, he was declared insane by a panel of doctors, and sent to a remote palace by a psychiatrist. Three days later, the deposed monarch drowned himself in a lake, and took his psychiatrist with him. Today, the Mad King’s architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria’s biggest tourist attractions.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.