Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria was a very strange man from an unhappy family. He became the ruler of the second largest of the German kingdoms because his grandfather Maximillian IV disgraced the throne by his very public displays of affection for the age’s hottest vamp and exotic dancer, Lola Montez.

“What Lola wants, Lola gets” are the words to a very popular song, and I guess it was all too true in 1864. But old grand-dad’s lack of virtue was not to be put up with by the very conservative Bavarians. Maximillian was forced to abdicate in favor of his 18-year-old grandson, Ludwig II.

Ludwig was the great royal hope for a new age of Bavarian glory. Like many teenagers, he was caught up in music. This time it was the highly romantic and nationalistic music of Richard Wagner. Wagner’s operas were like revolutionary declarations of war for German unity and nationalism. They also reached back to the misty past of mythic glory filled with Norse heroic Teutonic figures.

In 1848, Wagner even burned down his own theater as his revolutionary statement against the king of Saxony. Let’s just say that Ludwig and Wagner shared a flair for the dramatic. The collaboration of these two ultra romantics would lead to a spending spree of huge proportions for Wagner himself, the production of grand operas, and the building of castles for the boy king.

The king’s ministers blamed Wagner for Ludwig’s strange infatuation with German myth and castle building. Eventually they forced Wagner to leave the country and migrate to Switzerland. Ludwig grew lonesome for his pal Wagner, and slipped off to Switzerland to join Wagner and his family in exile. The king deserted his kingdom in the dead of night.

This thought filled Wagner and his bride, Franz Liszt’s daughter, with horror. Eventually Wagner convinced Ludwig that it was his duty to return, like a true Siegfried, to his royal obligation as king and protector of his people.

Tearfully, Ludwig departed, lost the Seven Weeks War to Prussia, then went back to castle building. As time passed, Ludwig supported Wagner’s new theater at Bayreuth. He once again became Wagner’s greatest patron. In fact, Ludwig often bought out the entire opera house for the night. As Mark Twain reports in his book, A Tramp Abroad, the king would sit in the opera house alone loudly cheering his favorite scenes from Wagner’s operas.

There was one scene involving a great deal of rain that Ludwig liked quite a bit. When the scene was finished, the king loudly applauded, cheered, and arose from his seat saying, “Bravo, Bravo, play it again. Play it once more.”

Once again, the singers, soaking wet and cold, would play the scene again, and again, and again, until the king was satisfied. Sometimes the singers would suffer dozens of soakings.

In time, the king would only travel at night from one castle to another. He dressed in black, rode in a black coach pulled by black horses, and was preceded by black clad riders on black horses carrying torches to light the way through the forests.

The ministers thought that it was time for the king to go. Ludwig was forced to abdicate his throne to his somewhat less mad younger brother, Otto. Otto had once shocked the people of Munich by appearing at high mass at the cathedral in the nude. He threw himself naked on the altar and begged forgiveness for his sins. Let us say he made a bit of a splash.

Today we would say that Ludwig and Otto were bi-polar (what we used to say was manic-depressive), and could not help themselves. Otto’s uncle Luitpold was named regent. Luitpold had the good grace not to demand repeated scenes at the opera involving rain or comporting himself about at mass in the nude.

Alas, poor Ludwig did not end up well. He was the first royal of Europe to be treated by an honest-to-goodness psychiatrist (a student of Sigmund Freud.) He became the first European royal to drown his psychiatrist just before he took a fatal swim out to an island to see his favorite cousin, Elizabeth, empress of Austria. How sad, but we do have coins of all these interesting characters to remember them by.