Palace to Museum

As Nepal continues to follow the ignoble path disastrously taken previously by so many other countries, the former royal palace is to become a museum.

I admit I hadn't been thinking about Nepal much lately, but this brings it all back. I, of course, utterly despise and detest this republican regime and condemn all its actions as illegitimate and illegal. How I wish there were something I and other monarchists could do to reverse the tragic events of last year! While Nepal is "only" the latest of a sadly long list of monarchies to fall, it has special significance for monarchists my age and younger as the first (and, I hope, only) anti-monarchical revolution of our conscious lifetimes. (Unsurprisingly, the fall of the Shah of Iran did not make much of an impression on me when I was six months old.) Prior to the deterioration of the situation in Nepal in the early years of this century, while I found it hard to be optimistic about restorations (my hopes having been crushed by the loss of momentum in the Balkans in the 1990s following the deceptively promising "fall" of Communism), I was able to imagine that a slight consolation of having been born so late in the 20th century would be that at least I was unlikely to witness a decline in the worldwide number of monarchies. Until 2008, the year I turned 30, that seemed to be the case, but the fall of Nepal ruined it.

Now we know how the monarchists of earlier eras, especially those who lived through the terrible years of 1917-18 and/or 1945-47 (yes, the wars preceding those dates were terrible too, but at least they are generally recognized as such; the falls of the monarchies per se don't get as much attention and that's what I'm talking about here) felt. Unlike Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Balkans, etc., all of which have been republics since before I was born (not that that's acceptable either!) I was used to Nepal being a monarchy. It was colored in the map at my website; its monarchy had survived long enough to have a website. (Most monarchies, of course, were abolished long before the advent of the internet or even television.) Its distinctive flag was included on the poster of flags of the world's monarchies I'd made out of construction paper as a teenager in the 1990s. As the world's only Hindu state, Nepal held a unique position in the colorful kaleidoscope of monarchy.

And now yet another country is throwing its ancient heritage into the garbage in order to inaugurate a New Era in which there will be no place for anyone committed to the authentic traditions of his country. The beautiful throne, no longer to be used, is reduced to a tourist trinket behind a rope. How dare they?! It is evil, and while there is nothing I can do, I will never accept it. I declare myself an enemy of the republican "government" of Nepal and call on anyone who is in a position to do anything about it to do whatever is necessary to bring it down and bring the murdering traitor Prachanda and his gang of Maoist thugs to justice. Long live King Gyanendra, and long live the Kingdom of Nepal!