and of course, as always there’s a Thailand connection: “Kathmandu Airport officials said the former prince boarded a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok, but said they did not know his final destination.”
Thai Airways is good to fly to Kathmandu. It and Royal Nepal have non-stop flights.
The overwhelming unpopularity of this guy AND his father, the now ex-king, was a major factor in the abolition of the monarchy this year. If the old royal family had not been massacred seven years ago, the country would no doubt still be a monarchy, because THEY were so popular.
No, it was not this crown prince who massacred them. It was the OLD crown prince who massacred them, on June 1, 2001, and then killed himself. With no diect heirs left, the kingship passed to the old king’s brother, who just stepped down.
The new king was already unpopular even before the massacre and became even more so afterward. Conspiracy theories abounded that he was behind the massacre himself, so as to become king and secure the throne for his own son, who is the one who just boarded the flight to Bangkok in the story in the OP. But how he was supposed to have persuaded the old crown prince to kill everyone and then himself is beyond me. Security video reportedly shows it really was the old crown prince doing the shooting.
But the whole massacre was odd. This was a higly popular royal family, and the old crown prince seemed relatively well adjusted as far as privileged monarchy goes. He was often spotted around Kathmandu with his girlfriend, eating in pizza joints and the like side by side with the peasants, who crowded around them giving them good wishes. Supposedly, his family did not approve of the girlfriend for whatever reason and forbade him to see her anymore, and that’s supposedly what sparked the massacre, as best as they can tell. The whole incident remains very mysterious.
My wife had a small close encounter with the old queen of Nepal, the one killed in the massacre seven years ago. She (my wife) was attending a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October 1999. That’s a nice city, too, I always enjoy KL. At the end of her conference, I flew down to meet her. We spent a few days in the city, then took the train down to Singapore. A nice little vacation.
Anyway, at that time, the Petronas Towers were pretty much finished but not yet open to the public. They took all of the conference attendees up into the Towers, as high as that bridge between the two. It was while they were in that bridge that they all had to stand aside because the queen of Nepal was in town, and she and her entourage were being given a private tour of the Towers at that moment. They had to let her pass.
That was a very weird story. I recall the Old Crown Prince being in a coma in what was officially labelled an acidental shooting. Was it ever official that he killed himself? Or did some guard cap him and they didn’t want to admit this?
I’m going on memory here, but I don’t recall anything accidental being claimed. The coma story sounds familiar; they may have pulled the plug. IIRC, they said video confirmed he shot himself, but who knows.
Ah yes, I see in his Wikipedia entry that he did linger for three days before dying. Ironically, he was king, for three days, since his father had died. The entry also goes into the conspiracy theories.