Looks like Sleeping Beauty's castle, huh? That's because Disney based his castle on King Ludwig's, who based his castle on neo-Romantic German kitsch, which was based on cultural memory of medieval castles that never existed. King Ludwig II liked to imagine that he was a fairy tale king, rather than the lame-duck monarch of a barely-sovereign state in the Industrial Revolution. Wikipedia says he was fond of wandering through the countryside, giving lavish gifts to commoners who were nice to him. His fairy tale castle broke the bank, but the Bavarians loved him anyway (who wouldn't love a deeply eccentric castle-commissioner?). His ministers loved him less, and they engineered a legal deposition by having him declared insane - not exactly a stretch, admittedly, for a man who wanted no more from his kingship than to canoe around his palace grotto while a soprano sang Die Walkure for him.
But still. The whitecoats came to get Ludwig and he balked - "How can you declare me insane?," he asked the doctor. "After all, you have never seen or examined me before."
The next day, Ludwig and the doctor were both found dead in a shallow lake.
How this is not yet a musical is beyond me.
nothing like taking shots at "little" countries as a jew, right?
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