Short answers, pulled from the story.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was a historical figure who constructed castles as a physical kingdom of fantasy during the last decade of his life. He drowned in the waters of Lake Starnberg on the 13th of June 1886 under circumstances that remain debated to this day.
Sigmund Freud argued that a certain quota of escapist fantasy is not a sign of weakness but a biological necessity for human survival. He posited that people cannot subsist on the scanty satisfaction they can extort from reality alone and require auxiliary constructions to endure the harshness of existence.
The Great Depression created a mass poverty that demanded a mental escape from the economic downturn following the stock market crash of 1929. Magazines, radio, and movies became tools to help people mentally escape from the harsh realities of the era.
Ernst Bloch argued that utopias and images of fulfillment included an impetus for a radical social change despite being regressive from a technological-rational society viewpoint. He believed that social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently, making the escapist impulse a potentially honest substitute for revolution.
The Norwegian psychologist Frode Stenseng developed a dualistic model to explain the paradox of escapism by distinguishing between self-suppression and self-expansion. Self-suppression stems from motives to run away from unpleasant thoughts, while self-expansion comes from the desire to gain positive experiences and discover new aspects of self.