Publisher's Synopsis
The articles and books I had accumulated included criminal forensic accounts, but these were necessarily speculative because rapid cremations in accord with Hindu custom precluded gathering systematic evidence. With few facts confirmed, suspicion was widespread among foreign commentators that Birendra's successor, his brother Gyanendra, had mass-murdered his way to the throne like Shakespeare's Richard Ill. Other popular narratives evoked Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's "star-crossd lovers", in the persons of Crown Prince Dipendra and the beautiful Devyani, of whom Queen Aishwarya reportedly disapproved. Perhaps inevitably, as persons around the world sought explanations, Shakespearean tragedy came to mind. But twenty-first century Kathmandu is not Shakespeare's London or Verona.
