“When [Mindon] died without an obvious heir in 1878, one of his queens intrigued to raise to the throne one Thibaw, an insignificant son of the king’s who had spent most of his life in a Buddhist monastery. She and her supporters hoped to rule the country with Thibaw as a puppet. . . .
It had been an immemorial tradition when a new king succeeded for there to be a “purging of the realm according to custom” “i.e. a massacre of the previous ruler’s kinsmen. Since Thibaw was distant from the throne, he had to kill eighty-three members of the royal family. The killings were spread over two days and were carried out by members of the Royal Guard. As was customary, the princesses were strangled while the princes were sewn into red velvet sacks and gently beaten to death with paddles”it being taboo to shed royal blood.”

—Pascal Knoo Thwe, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey, 2002.