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T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
The Amusements, Eccentricities, Accomplishments, Superstitions and Frolics of the Kings and Queens of Europe
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But one of the strangest and most eccentric of modern kings was Ludwig II., known as the “Mad King” of Bavaria, who from his earliest youth appears to have been a dreamer and a visionary. The romantic legends which charmed him as a boy retained their influence over him in after years, and he grew up with the most morbid propensities, never taught to control himself, or to keep his nerves in check. He disliked physical exertion, and an aversion to anything disagreeable became in him a monomania, for he could not endure even the sight of a cripple or of an ill-formed person.[7]
As a boy, we are told, the Castle of Hohenschwangau in the Bavarian Alps fascinated his imagination, for “knights in armour spoke to him; Rhine maidens drew him into their arms; he saw his ancestors, the old Wittelsbach heroes, seated upon their war-horses, their swords drawn, fighting their way into Rome, or resting under the palms by the banks of the Nile.” At two and twenty he betrothed himself to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte—daughter of Maximilian of Bavaria and sister of the Empress of Austria—who afterwards became Duchesse d’Alençon, and perished in the fire at the Bazar de la Charité. But for some reason the match was broken off, and henceforth he became “more melancholy and more enamoured of solitude,” dwelling “in pathetic loneliness, with little society save his brooding dreams—his days, or rather his nights, for he had already begun to invert the division of the twenty-four hours, peopled with the heroes and legends of myth.”
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