“Consider the dragonfly,” said Nithakhong Somsanith, erstwhile prince of an old lineage in Laos. On a warm day in the ancient royal capital of Luang Prabang, the two of us were seated on the wood veranda of a French-colonial villa. Nearby, in one of the many collect ponds that demarcate neighborhoods in this city of 103,000, a squadron of iridescent insects dive-bombed a cloud of pesky gnats.