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Around the dinner table at the Narayanhity palace in Kathmandu on Friday night sat a king, a queen, two princes, one princess, assorted other royals.

A moment of apocalyptic madness later, only one of them is left standing -- a 29-year-old prince who, frustrated in love, takes out a gun and shoots his family dead, one after another after another.

The assassin, who then turns the gun on himself, is now on life-support systems. Clinically dead, he is also, constitutionally, the new king -- replacing the king, his father, whom he killed.

It is a tragedy -- a very human, very real, tragedy.

And like most human tragedies, those who survive are left struggling for comprehension.

At times like these, a word of sympathy, a shared expression of sorrow, goes a long way. So write in, to the bereaved family, and the grief-striken people of Nepal. Be with them, when they need the word most.

Death of a Monarch: The Complete Coverage