Rumors abound that the prince is innocent, that the massacre was a conspiracy to put the king's younger brother, Gyanendra, on the throne. To make a bad situation worse, the editor and two publishers of Kantipur, Nepal's largest daily, were arrested Thursday for publishing a call to arms by a guerrilla leader of Nepal's Maoist party.

For most Americans, Nepal holds two dubious distinctions: It's the staging ground for an endless parade of ego-serving expeditions up Mount Everest; and its photogenic capital, Kathmandu, served as a fabled haunt for the nomadic hash hounds of the 1960s.

In fact, Kathmandu's notorious hashish cafes were outlawed in the early 1970s, when the late King Birendra was crowned. Nepal's current expatriate scene is huge and vibrant: a close-knit international society of scholars and artists, engineers and expedition leaders. Since 1979, I've lived part of nearly every year in Kathmandu. It has been a refuge of relaxed inspiration, a community where, as in Hemingway's Cuba or Paul Bowles' Tangier, one can live life on a human scale.

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The Kathmandu Valley is such a community for 2.5 million Nepalese as well. Despite its volatile history, which has included corruption and revolution, palace coups and human-rights abuses, Kathmandu is above all sacred ground, a place of ancient and modern pilgrimage. Its citizens are obsessively nationalistic, even if they have been awkward stewards of their magnificent land. They love their country and, in an ambivalent but undeniable way, they loved their king.

Birendra was one of the world's last absolute rulers. His word, until recently, was law. And though the 1990 revolution made him a constitutional monarch, he was no mere figurehead. He and his family were the keystones of Nepal's social, political and religious life. A laid-back king who enjoyed a good scotch and cigar more than the elbow grease of governing, Birendra asked the world to view Nepal as a "zone of peace."

Many Nepalese complained that he confused peace with passivity; but there is no doubt he unified a diverse population under an umbrella of benign tradition. Nearly 100 ethnic groups coexist in Nepal without bloody rivalry. Tibetan refugees fleeing from the Chinese in neighboring Tibet have been welcomed and, despite complaints from China, enjoy religious freedom -- including the right to venerate the Dalai Lama.

Birendra was no Nelson Mandela, but he was a source of great stability. He was familiar: Nearly every Nepali, no matter how cynical, saw the king in a fatherly light. And though he was broadly disliked before the 1990 revolution, his ability to change with the times ultimately won him the admiration and respect of his subjects.

This sort of affection is not lavished on the new King Gyanendra, a shrewd and powerful businessman once linked (by a prominent Nepali journalist who was later shot in the head) to drug trafficking. His son, Paras, is bluntly despised and had allegedly engaged in drinking and blowing coke with Dipendra since both were teens. (Back in 1988, a very reliable source informed me that the then 16-year-old crown prince had set his room on fire while freebasing cocaine.)

Another reason to be alarmed at Gyanendra's rise to power is his realpolitik recognition that China makes a faddish enemy but a profitable friend. For centuries, Nepal's closest regional tie has been with India, its lumbering democratic neighbor to the south. That relationship has been badly strained for the past 12 years, a tension that culminated in last December's anti-Indian riots in Kathmandu. Still, India and Nepal remain codependent. Nepal relies on India's ports and oil, and only the high Himalayas have kept the Chinese from "liberating" the Taj Mahal.

Many Nepalese believe that Gyanendra will cultivate a cozier rapport with China -- one that will bring new access roads, industrial incentives, even weapons purchases. Such a move is bound to shorten fingernails in New Delhi. In a worst-case scenario, the tectonic tensions between India and China might come to a head, with Nepal pulverized in the middle. A more likely possibility is that Nepal will bow to pressure from Beijing and begin limiting the freedom of Tibetan refugees -- and deporting new arrivals back to China.

But the massacre of Nepal's royal family is more than a blow to the country's ethnic stability. It shakes the foundations of every Nepali citizen's worldview in a way that most Americans, inured to savage and random crimes, can barely comprehend.

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