Queen Supaya–Lat

The young Queen Supaya-lat and King Thibaw lived within the walled citadel of Mandalay. Their fabled palace with its tinkling fountains and moats of floating water lilies could have with ease belonged to Scheherazade's tales. And within the charmed walls of the palace, life was very pleasant indeed – pink-cheeked handmaidens from the Shan state played hide and seek with the Queen, their pretty feet showing just a little from under the shimmering pink silk skirts. Burmese rubies glowed on their ear lobes and strings of pearls around their necks – against the dark teak of the palace walls they made a very fetching picture indeed.

Sometimes a bird from a foreign sky flew into the Queen's quarters and the Queen – no, no she did not kill the poor creature. Instead she soothed it, gave it some water to drink, placed perhaps a gold leaf on its beak. And her handmaidens laughed in merriment at their Queen's act of clemency, reminiscent of the young Prince Siddhartha's tenderness for the stricken swan:

But ominous clouds were darkening the horizons of this Eden. For it was said that the young Queen Supaya-lat was as ambitious and as strong willed as her mother, the Dowager Queen Hsinbyumya-shin, King Thibaw's stepmother and the Middle Palace Queen of his father, the late King Mindon. Like her mother she plotted and conspired to protect the sovereignty of her husband's throne and what she conceived to be the purity of the royal lineage.