Mist and Mystery

It was a rather misty day to tour the Bavarian castles built by King Ludwig II. This is the smallest of three royal castles, Linderhof, which was built during the 19th century as a hunting lodge. The Palace of Versailles in France largely influenced the style of it's construction. King Ludwig used this castle as his getaway, or perhaps better stated, as his hideout when he wanted to escape from people.

The grandeur of Neuschwanstein,with it's magnificent neo-Romanesque style is the most well known castle in the world. It appears through the mist like something out of a fairytale. The man who conceived its design - King Ludwig II, was considered quite eccentric. His life is filled with all the drama of money, power and women. His death remains a mystery to this day.
Here's a little from wikipedia

"The next day, 13 June 1886, at around 6 p.m., Ludwig asked Gudden to accompany him on a walk through the Schloß Berg parkland along the shore of Lake Starnberg. Gudden agreed; the walk may even have been his suggestion, and he told the aides not to accompany them. His words were ambiguous...("No attendant may come along") and whether they were meant to follow at a discreet distance is not clear. The two men were last seen at about 6:30 p.m.; they were due back at eight but never returned. After searches were made for more than three hours by the entire castle personnel in a gale with heavy rain, at 11:30 p.m. that night, the bodies of both the King and von Gudden were found, head and shoulders above the shallow water near the shore. The King's watch had stopped at 6:54. Gendarmes patrolling the park had heard and seen nothing.
Ludwig's death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig was a very strong swimmer in his youth, the water was approximately waist-deep where his body was found, and he had not expressed suicidal feelings during the crisis. Gudden's body showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation, leading to the suspicion that he was strangled by Ludwig...
Many hold that Ludwig was murdered by his enemies while attempting to escape from Berg. One account suggests that the king was shot. The King's personal fisherman, Jakob Lidl (1864–1933), stated, "Three years after the king's death I was made to swear an oath that I would never say certain things — not to my wife, not on my deathbed, and not to any priest ... The state has undertaken to look after my family if anything should happen to me in either peace time or war." Lidl kept his oath, at least orally, but left behind notes which were found after his death. According to Lidl, he had hidden behind bushes with his boat, waiting to meet the king, in order to row him out into the lake, where loyalists were waiting to help him escape. "As the king stepped up to his boat and put one foot in it, a shot rang out from the bank, apparently killing him on the spot, for the king fell across the bow of the boat." However, the autopsy report indicates no scars or wounds found on the body of the dead king; on the other hand, many years later Countess Josephine von Wrba-Kaunitz would show her afternoon tea guests a grey Loden coat with two bullet holes in the back, asserting it was the one Ludwig was wearing. Another theory suggests that Ludwig died of natural causes (such as a heart attack or stroke) brought on by the extreme cold (12°C) of the lake during an escape attempt."

The history is both fascinating and filled with questions. What is your theory?