Prologue: An Omen


FORTY YEARS FROM NOW, Ludwig II will be murdered: by himself; or by the doctor who had declared his mind unsound; or by an assassin hired by disgruntled statesmen; or by fear and ambition—his own or that of others; or by the gentle, nudging tide of the Würmsee; or by some symphony of these; or by none of them.

His body will be found, drowned in the shallow of the reeds, his doctor floating a few feet away; his jacket turned inside out on dry land missing a bullet hole’s worth of fabric, or not.

His cousin, Empress Sisi of Austria, waiting across the lake, will think she hears a cry and pace the shores, wondering if her kindred could possibly be strong enough to swim all that way.

* * *

But before that—because the story will unfold no differently if you learn the outcome now or later, because the ending will confound you no matter where it finds you, because if you combine enough answers they don’t look much different than a question—it is best if you know now: before Ludwig II is found dead, he will live with such a violence of feeling that his body will shake when he witnesses extreme beauty; when, onstage, Elsa makes the mistake of asking the Knight of the Swan his true nature and learns that he is, in fact, Lohengrin, protector of the Grail, Ludwig’s sensitivity will force him from his box seat to throw up in a bucket positioned just out of view of the audience. Ludwig will invert his fortune by paying for operas he cannot afford. He will call for castle after castle to be built, never finishing a single one, his vision always outpacing the material world.

* * *

Ludwig will row out to a small, secluded island and snag his way through rosebushes—Alpenfees and Eurydices and Gretels, the names of which he prefers cupping in his mouth to lacing their sweet perfumes through his nose—tucking himself into their sturdy leaves and buxom blossoms, trying to escape bad news, but it will find him, again and again.

* * *

After all of this, Ludwig’s cabinet of ministers, frustrated, maybe even convinced they are in the right, will declare him mad. They’ll make a list of his indiscretions and read it so many times, they’ll lose track of which items are bolstered by evidence and which will crumple under the slightest stress, like a plaster model never replaced by its marble heir. Rightfully. Wrongfully. They will pay a doctor to guarantee Ludwig’s lack of sanity without having met him and they will depose him and lock him away in a castle-cum-asylum.

* * *

This is after Ludwig has been named King at eighteen, a young man forced to rule too young, a romantic hero to the Bavarian people, crowned with a job he was not designed for.

* * *

Born seven years before her cousin, Sisi will always treat Ludwig like a little brother, sharing her own experiences on this parallel path of royal obligation, but her powers of empathy will repeatedly be pushed to their modest limit. The demands placed on an empress are different than those exacted from a king. Sisi will lose an infant, resent a daughter to the point of neglect, suffer the suicide of her son, and suffocate a fourth child with all of the devotion she denied the others. She will flaunt her loyalty to the Kingdom of Hungary, even to the point of snubbing the Austrian Empire. Deemed the most beautiful woman in Europe in her youth, she will stop sitting for portraits at age thirty-two; in fact she will stop sitting almost entirely, filling her days with walking and riding to keep her figure trim, shrinking herself to hide from all those prying eyes. Sisi will wander as far away as she can—to the countryside of England, Madeira, Corfu—in an attempt to gain control of the life she feels has been stolen from her. Thirteen years after Ludwig’s passing, Sisi will meet her own dramatic end: on a stretcher in a Swiss hotel, bleeding out from an Italian anarchist’s stab wound, the ambivalent martyr of Austria’s last grasp at remaining a major European power.

* * *

But first, before all of this can happen, Otto Friedrich Wilhelm must be born.


In Tribute


ONE HUNDRED ONE CANNON SHOTS pummel the air to announce the good news. On this, the 25th day of August, 1845, a prince has been born.

Crown Princess Marie Frederike—whose son Otto Friedrich Wilhelm has just emerged from her, like the pit pulled from a cherry—glances at him for only a moment, nodding once—like she is agreeing that a bottle of wine is fit to drink—before he’s passed to the wet nurse.

* * *

King Ludwig I, the child’s grandfather, receives the good news while riding on horseback in a parade through the streets of Munich celebrating his own birthday, a national holiday. “What marvelous luck!” he exclaims, for the child has been born at the same hour, even, as he, on the feast of the patron saint of Bavaria, St. Louis, his namesake. King Ludwig I pulls on the reins to turn back to the palace, so he might request, in the way only kings can request, that the child’s name be changed to match his own.

* * *

Prince Maximilian, never even having laid eyes on his firstborn son, agrees easily to the name change. “If it matters so much to the old man, so be it.”

His wife, the Crown Princess—a straight arrow all the way, fond of errands of exertion and sharp air, a trait to be inherited by her son in the form of midnight rides through the snowy mountains—is unable to hide her displeasure. “The newspapers have already been notified,” she says.

“But have they been printed?” Prince Max asks. “And even if they have, how great an expense could it be to have them reprinted? It is a remarkable coincidence, you must admit.”

“Fine, then.” The Princess rakes her resignation over her vocal cords. “Perhaps if our son shares the name of his grandfather, he will inherit, too, his backbone, for that has obviously skipped your generation.”

* * *

When Ludwig I meets Ludwig II, he tells the infant loudly—the grandfather’s hearing being rough and deaf to nuance—the tale of their hallowed patron. “We are named after Louis IX of France, sponsor of the arts and architecture. Fair and just above all, a man of frugality, and you are destined for such a life of vision and advocacy.”

But Grandfather Ludwig has not yet met the greatest calamity of his own life, a woman who will put pressure on every angle of his virtue, who will collapse his good intentions. Ludwig I does not yet know to warn Ludwig II that he might suffer the same strain of crisis. He does not mention that the Crusades, in which Louis IX fought, marked one of the darkest moments of human history, a pure and unveiled campaign of extermination, erasure, intolerance. Ludwig I tells Ludwig II only of the beauty and grandeur that await him, and sings him an old lullaby as the baby gambles against sleep:

We proud children’s men

Are poor and vain;

We do not know much,

but spin spirits of the air

We look for many arts,

but come further from our goal.

The child bursts into tears.

* * *

Crown Princess Marie Frederike visits her son daily. Even if he’s feeding at the time she arrives, the Queen asks that the wet nurse leave them alone. Interrupted and hungry, Ludwig cries—rooting, rebuffed.

More than once, Crown Prince Maximilian hears the wails of his son in the courtyard below and looks out, ready to send a servant to insist the Prince be brought inside, ready to reprimand the nurse for not better tending his son’s needs. More than once, he sees his wife holding the screaming child and shuts the window instead.


In Which Devotion Is Born


SOME SIX MILES AWAY at the summer palace Possenhofen, on the banks of the Würmsee, Elisabeth, affectionately known to her family as Sisi, learns of the birth of her cousin Ludwig.

At seven years old, with two older siblings and three younger, it’s not as though Sisi has any shortage of playmates, but she does love a reason to show off. Her home is an idyllic place where her father, Duke Max—not to be confused with Prince Max of Bavaria—plays the zither and her mother, Princess Ludovika of Bavaria, complains about his lack of skill.

Sisi is allowed to ride her favorite pony the thirty miles around the lake in a loop with a chaperone, and the only thing that brings her greater joy is when her father invites over members of the circus to teach her riding tricks.

A new cousin to whom Sisi can show off her formidable skills? A dream come true. Sisi knows it will be years before the baby is old enough to register awe, but she can be patient. “Can we send my cousin a gift?”

“Your father has already composed a song for little Ludwig,” Ludovika tells her.

“But I’d like to send something,” Sisi says. “A bouquet of jasmine from the garden?”

“Of course, darling,” her mother says.

“Every day until I am allowed to meet him?”

Ludovika, despite the extravagance of such a request, agrees. “As long as you pick the flowers, I will have them delivered.” Ludovika assumes Sisi will tire of this task, but her determination is as tenacious as the delicate white buds that pepper the arbors.

For the rest of his life, Ludwig will love the herbal stir of jasmine and never wonder why.


A Matter of Taste


WHEN LUDWIG IS SEVEN MONTHS OLD, his wet nurse dies of typhoid fever. The picky child won’t accept any other’s milk for days. The doctor urges Princess Marie Frederike to offer her son her help, but she can’t bring herself to make this sacrifice. Ludwig’s body weight halves itself, and the women charged with his care worry they might lose the child if a solution isn’t found soon. Another beautiful young nurse runs to the kitchen and returns with a bottle of arrack. She rubs a little of the coconut-flower liqueur on her nipple and Ludwig finally latches with fervor.

“The Prince knows what he likes,” the nurse says with a smile, and her companions laugh for the first time since losing their friend the week before.


Copyright © 2023 by Jac Jemc