NEW DELHI -- The massacre in Nepal's royal palace is intriguing to the core.
The blood bath -- which wiped out just about the entire royalty, including King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and their two children, while leaving the probable assassin, Crown Prince Dipendra, grievously wounded, but now dead -- hardly appeared to be the work of a man enraged by his mother's refusal to let him marry the woman of his choice.
Admittedly, Prince Dipendra loved guns and could be quite nasty when provoked. Daniel Kruger, now a political consultant in Britain, said while describing his days with the crown prince at Eton College: "I once teased him when he was doing skipping exercises, and he got so violent that he lifted me off the ground by my jaw. . . . In fact, he even kept a loaded revolver in his room . . ."