Why the lives of royalty continue to fascinate us
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. “This could be the perfect setting for a murder mystery," chuckled my friend Milena as we drove up to the ornate gates of Dhenkanal Palace, 75km from Bhubaneswar. “Nine guests arrive at a palace for a holiday.
Next morning there are eight." It was indeed very Agatha Christie meets Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The 19th-century palace glowed in the afternoon sun, yellow and white, like a pineapple gateau, its gates guarded by two snarling mythical lions. A sign warned “Beware of Dogs" and an old maroon Austin Cambridge with a DHA licence plate stood outside, as if waiting for some portal to open to another age.
A wizened old guard with an impressive handlebar moustache wordlessly unlatched the gates. As we walked in, parrots shrieked in welcome. Or perhaps in warning.
Dhenkanal Palace in Odisha, like many royal residences in India, is now also a hotel. On paper we are all staunch believers in republics, but royalty remains our guilty pleasure whether it’s the House of Windsor or our homegrown versions. When I read Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’ Freedom at Midnight as a teenager, the most exciting bits involved the shenanigans of the royals from the 500-plus princely states of India.
India’s princes, wrote Lapierre and Collins, had on average 11 titles, 5.8 wives, 12.6 children, 9.2 elephants, 2.8 railway cars, 3.4 Rolls-Royces and 22.9 tiger scalps. In socialist India, where excess was frowned upon, this felt both vulgar and alluring. Now palaces-turned-hotels feed into feudal fantasies to be kings and queens for a day.
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