Nepal
It is a darkly comic tale. According to The Rising Nepal, “King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev passed away at 09:15 p.m. in an unanticipated incident at Narayanhity Royal Palace last night”. An “unanticipated incident” indeed, which also just happened to kill another seven members of the royal family, in what the news media are calling the biggest mass death among the world’s royalty since the Bolsheviks had the Tsar’s family shot.
If we are to believe Prince Gyanendra, the new regent, the deaths occurred after the “sudden discharge or explosion of an automatic weapon inside the palace”. If we believe eyewitness accounts, including that of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Crown Prince of Nepal — now the new King — slaughtered much of his own family after a dispute over the implications of the Astrologer Royal’s advice about the timing of the prince’s marriage, before turning the gun on himself. Neither story seems especially plausible, but the balance of probabilities seems to me to favour the latter.
The Crown Prince is apparently in a deep coma in hospital — although it’s not clear whether we should believe anything emanating from Nepal at the moment –, and the new regent may soon be making the decision to switch off the life-support system, and thereby to become King himself — which would bring, I suppose, what Americans like to call “closure” to the proceedings.
There are many reasons for wanting to get rid of royal families at home and abroad. Their inability to handle their domestic affairs in the manner of sane and rational people is just one of them.