the sight of the monarch and his heavily pregnant wife being paraded throughthe streets on old bullock carts as his subjects wept and prostrated themselves was a humiliation that has been seared on Myanmar's collective memory ever since.Fearing the royal family would become a focus for dissent ,the British closed off the palace to the public and the doors remained shut following independence in 1948.The brutal junta that seized power in 1962 also sidelined the family, seeking instead to reinvent themelves as the successors to the warrior kinga of old during a half-century of rule.While in power, they drove the country's economy to rain and closed its people off from much of the outside world.But interest in the monarchy reighited under the quasi-civilian government that took power five years ago when former president Thein Sein, a reformist general, visited Thibaw's tomb in the Indian seaside town of Ratnagiri.Myanmar's remaining royals, who used to gather in secret for their commemorations, have seized on the renewed interest in their family this year.