Thibaw Min
Kipling mentions the Burmese royal family of the time: ""An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat - - jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen." " Thibaw Min (1859-1916, often spelt Theebaw at that time) was the last reigning king of Burma, with his palace in Mandalay. He married his half-sister, Supayalat, shortly before becoming king in 1878 in a bloody palace coup supposedly engineered by his mother-in-law. He introduced a number of reforms but, in 1885, made the mistake of attempting to regain control of Lower Burma from the British forces that had held it since 1824. The result was a British invasion that immediately sent Thibaw and Supayalat into exile in India. So, to the soldier in Kipling's poem, his and her names are familiar, as the last and very recent royalty of a British colony.