Tea at Trianon: The Enigmatic “Fairy-Tale” King of Bavaria

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

The Enigmatic “Fairy-Tale” King of Bavaria

From The Collector:

When any historical figure is said to have been mad, we have to consider the time and place in which they lived and how this conditioned their diagnosis: what were the norms in their society from which they apparently deviated? Moreover, how did that society treat those it considered mad, and what motivations might there have been for interpreting their behavior as such?

In Ludwig II’s case, the ministers and physicians who produced a report on his madness certainly had a motivation: to remove him from the throne for the good of the state of Bavaria. They contacted various insiders at Ludwig’s court, and then passed this information to four psychiatrists for corroboration.

As a recent study has pointed out, none of these doctors examined Ludwig, and only one of them had even met the king: neurologist Bernhard von Gudden, who wrote in the report that Ludwig was “teetering like a blind man without guidance on the verge of a precipice.”

The evidence was that Ludwig avoided the public, holed up in his study concocting grand architectural plans, rambling through the mountains, or demanding that theatrical performances be put on for his sole enjoyment. His treatment of those around him could be erratic, with occasional outbursts of petulance or anger.

Most importantly for late 19th-century doctors preoccupied with hereditary degeneration, Ludwig’s younger brother, Otto, suffered from bouts of debilitating mental illness. This was sufficient for the government to agree, in June 1886, that Ludwig should vacate the throne. (Read more.)