The King in Exile

In 1878, as the king of Burma lay dying, one of his queens schemed for his forty-first son, Thibaw, to supersede his half-brothers to the throne. For seven years, King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat ruled from the resplendent, intrigue-infused Golden Palace in Mandalay, where they were treated as demigods. After a war against Britain in 1885, their kingdom was lost, and the family was exiled to the secluded town of Ratnagiri in British-occupied India. Here they lived, closely guarded, for over thirty-one years. The king's four daughters received almost no education, and their social interaction was restricted mainly to their staff. As the princesses grew, so did their hopes and frustrations. Two of them fell in love with 'highly inappropriate' men. In 1916, the heartbroken king died. Queen Supayalat and her daughters were permitted to return to Rangoon in 1919. In Burma, the old queen regained some of her feisty spirit as visitor came by daily to pay their respects. Ail the princesses, however, had to make numerals adjustments in a world they had no knowledge of. The betrayed, beautiful First Princess returned to live in Ratnagiri; the Second Princess settled in Kalimpong, where she and her adoring husband set about reinventing themselves; the charming Third Princess was unlucky in love, nut lucky otherwise; and the ambitious Fourth Princess made a dramatic bid for her father's kingdom. The impact of the deposition and exile echoed forever in each of their lives, as it did in the lives of their children. Written after years of meticulous research, and richly supplemented with photographs and illustrations, The King in Exile is an engrossing human-interest story of this forgotten but fascinating family.