Ludwig spent all his own private royal revenues (although not state funds as is commonly thought) on these projects, borrowed extensively, and defied all attempts by his ministers to restrain him.

As an adolescent, Ludwig began a relationship with his aide de camp, Prince Paul, a member of the wealthy Bavarian Thurn und Taxis family.

Nevertheless, Ludwig regretted Bavaria's loss of independence and refused to attend Wilhelm's 18 January proclamation as German Emperor in the Palace of Versailles.

Ludwig became engaged to Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria, his cousin and the youngest sister of his dear friend, Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

[13] Sophie later married Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Alençon, grandson of French King Louis Philippe I, at Possenhofen Castle at which Ludwig II unexpectedly attended the reception.

His diary, private letters, and other documents reveal his strong homosexual desires,[14] which he struggled to suppress to remain true to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Throughout his reign, Ludwig had a succession of close friendships with men, including his aide-de-camp the Bavarian prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis, chief equerry and master of the horse Richard Hornig, the Hungarian theater actor Josef Kainz, and courtier Alfons Weber.

Later, the composer wrote of his first meeting with Ludwig, "Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods.

The composer's perceived extravagant and scandalous behaviour in the capital was unsettling for the conservative people of Bavaria, and the King was forced to ask Wagner to leave the city six months later, in December 1865.

In 1867, he visited Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's work at the Château de Pierrefonds and the Palace of Versailles in France, as well as the Wartburg near Eisenach in Thuringia, which largely influenced the style of his construction.

In his letters, Ludwig marvelled at how the French had magnificently built up and glorified their culture (e.g., architecture, art, and music) and how miserably lacking Bavaria was in comparison.

These projects provided employment for many hundreds of local labourers and artisans and brought a considerable flow of money to the relatively poor regions where his castles were built.

[27] In order to give an equivalent for the era, the British pound sterling, being the monetary hegemon of the time, had a fixed exchange rate (based on the gold standard) at £1 = 20.43 Goldmarks.

The walls of Neuschwanstein are decorated with frescoes depicting scenes from the legends used in Richard Wagner's operas, including Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and the somewhat less than mystic Die Meistersinger.

In 1877, Ludwig had Einsiedlei des Gurnemanz (a small hermitage, as seen in the third act of Parsifal) erected near Hunding's Hut, with a meadow of spring flowers; a replica made in 2000 can now be seen in the park at Linderhof.

It was started in 1867 as quite a small structure, but after extensions in 1868 and 1871, the dimensions reached 69.5 x 17.2 x 9.5 m. It featured an ornamental lake complete with skiff, a painted panorama of the Himalayas as a backdrop, an Indian fisher-hut of bamboo, a Moorish kiosk, and an exotic tent.

The litany of supposed bizarre behavior included his pathological shyness, his avoidance of state business, his complex and expensive flights of fancy, dining outdoors in cold weather and wearing heavy overcoats in summer, sloppy and childish table manners, dispatching servants on lengthy and expensive voyages to research architectural details in foreign lands, and violent threats of abuse to his servants.

The conspirators approached Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who doubted the report's veracity, calling it "rakings from the King's wastepaper-basket and cupboards".

Today, the claim of paranoia is not considered correct; Ludwig's behavior is rather interpreted as a schizotypal personality disorder, and he may also have suffered from Pick's disease during his last years, an assumption supported by a frontotemporal lobar degeneration mentioned in the autopsy report.

At 4 am on 10 June 1886, a government commission including Holnstein and Gudden arrived at Neuschwanstein to deliver the document of deposition to King Ludwig formally and to place him in custody.

Tipped off an hour or two earlier by a faithful servant, his coachman Fritz Osterholzer, Ludwig ordered the local police to protect him, and the commissioners were turned back from the castle gate at gunpoint.

Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria was the only member of the royal family who always remained on friendly terms with his cousin (with the exception of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria), so Ludwig II wrote him a telegram; the latter immediately intended to follow this call but was prevented from leaving his home at Nymphenburg Palace by his uncle Luitpold, who was about to take over government as the ruling Prince Regent.

Following dinner, at around 6 pm, Ludwig asked Gudden to accompany him on a further walk, this time through the Schloß Berg parkland along the shore of Lake Starnberg.

After searches were made for more than two hours by the entire castle staff in a gale with heavy rain, at 10:30 pm that night, the bodies of both Ludwig and Gudden were found, head and shoulders above the shallow water near the shore.

[7] Another theory suggests that Ludwig died of natural causes, such as a heart attack or stroke, brought on by the cool water (12 °C) of the lake during an escape attempt.

Many years later, Countess Josephine von Wrbna-Kaunitz would show her afternoon tea guests a grey Loden coat with two bullet holes in the back, asserting it was the one Ludwig had been wearing.

Since Otto was considered incapacitated by mental illness due to a diagnosis by Gudden and had been under medical supervision since 1883, the king's uncle Luitpold remained regent.

The palaces, given to Bavaria by Ludwig III's son Crown Prince Rupprecht in 1923,[51] have paid for themselves many times over and attract millions of tourists from all over the world to Germany each year.

Ludwig also sponsored the premieres of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and, through his financial support of the Bayreuth Festival, those of Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.

[64] Ludwig provided Munich with its opera house, Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, establishing a lasting tradition of comic and romantic musical theatre known as Singspiele as well as operettas produced for the Bavarian public.