Louis II

or Ludwig II

(born Aug. 25, 1845, Nymphenburg Palace, Munich—died June 13, 1886, Starnberger See, Bavaria) King of Bavaria (1864–86). The son of Maximilian II of Bavaria, he supported Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). He brought his territories into the newly founded German Empire in 1871 but concerned himself only intermittently with affairs of state, preferring a life of increasingly morbid seclusion. A lifelong patron of the composer Richard Wagner, he developed a mania for extravagant building projects; the most fantastic, Neuschwanstein, was a fairy-tale castle decorated with scenes from Wagner's operas. He drowned himself three days after he was formally declared insane.

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