Bloodbath in the Palace.(Nepal)(Brief Article)

The massacre was the stuff of tabloid headlines: SON SLAUGHTERS FAMILY IN SPAT OVER GIRLFRIEND. Except in this case, it was nearly impossible to exaggerate the grisly crime. The setting was the fabled city of Katmandu, and the killer was Crown Prince Dipendra, heir to the throne of the world's only Hindu kingdom. In a land where astrologers are commonly thought to be able to divine the future, the explanations offered for the multiple murders were not simple. There was talk of star-crossed love--that on the night of the killings, the crown prince feuded with his mother over his choice for a bride. But there were also murmurs about drug use, international intrigue and a royal succession that had been prophesied many years ago.

What was known with any confidence was this: on Friday evening the crown prince had joined his parents and other close family for dinner inside the vast royal compound in central Katmandu. Large Friday dinners, often over banquets of rice, lentils, wild boar and Nepalese curry, were a royal tradition. On this evening, the family had planned to discuss the crown prince's long-delayed wedding plans. Marriages are generally arranged in Nepal (in consultation with astrologers), and an argument apparently erupted between the queen and the crown prince over prospective brides. The crown prince bolted from the room, and returned a short time later dressed in military fatigues and armed with an automatic rifle. According to one account, he shot the king first; when the queen and Prince Nirajan followed Dipendra into the next room, he shot them, too. Then Dipendra re-entered the main room and shot several other relatives, including his sister. When the gunfire ended, at least seven people were dead and two others were critically wounded--nearly all of the adults in the Nepalese royal family. The crown prince himself was in a coma, apparently from a self-inflicted wound.

Why did he do it? It's clear that Dipendra, like so many other young royals around the globe, was trapped between the strict demands of tradition and his own modern yearnings. Although the monarchy had not wielded much power in Nepal since democratic elections in 1990, it still served as a source of stability in an extremely poor country suffering from a spreading Maoist insurgency. Yet the king himself was unhealthy--he ...