The Kohinoor may prove to be a curse for Prince William

Prince William has finally asked Kate Middleton to marry him. They have been ‘going out’, though that entails quite a lot of staying in, for eight years. She is not the first commoner to be asked to marry into the royal family. There was a Mrs Simpson, a commoner divorcee, for whom Edward VIII gave up his throne.

The wedding has been set for April 2011 and already rings have been exchanged. William gave Kate his mother, Princess Diana’s, ring. Some believers in luck wondered why he chose it as it hadn’t brought his mother any. It brought her, if rings bring things, heartbreak in marriage, divorce, one unsuccessful affair after another and then the fatal crash in a car in Paris.

The first bad fairy at the national rejoicing was an Anglican bishop who blogged his opinion that the marriage would last seven years.

This was probably more his cynical appraisal of the culture and character of the young generation rather than any schadenfreude on his part. He may have made a calculation that the prince’s parents, uncle Andrew and aunt Ann, all had marriages that didn’t last.

From the photographs, the ring looks perfectly presentable. I don’t believe in bad luck. If I see a ladder, I cross the road to walk under it. I make it a point to buy 13 eggs if they are being sold loose and deliberately avoid ‘organic’ products when genetically modified ones are available — I am against all forms of superstition.

But still, when the newspapers asked the public who should be the next King, the majority chose William, skipping Prince Charles and a generation; I felt a certain unease. The crowning of a British monarch involves a crown. The British crown is kept in the Tower of London for the tourists to pay to see. It contains as its centrepiece, the legendary Kohinoor Diamond.

This diamond doesn’t have a very clean history. The legend goes that it came from the holy rivers of India and adorned the crown of Krishna. It passed, by way of a king and dynasty mentioned in the Mahabharat, into known recorded history. We know it was acquired as loot by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and did him no good as his son Aurangzeb deposed him. In 1739, Nader Shah invaded and plundered India and carried off the Kohinoor. He was assassinated and the stone came into the hands of Ahmed Shah Abdali, whose successor Shah Shuja was deposed and fled with the diamond to the Punjab and sought the protection of Ranjit Singh. He gave the diamond to Ranjit Singh in gratitude for his assistance in regaining his kingdom.

Ranjit Singh’s successors, all successive owners of the diamond, came to untimely ends. Kharak Singh, Ranjit’s son was murdered and his son Nau Nihal Singh, while returning from his father’s funeral, was killed when a building collapsed on him. His uncle Sher Singh succeeded to the throne but was treacherously assassinated by his own nobles.

The British then annexed the Kingdom and Lord Dalhousie seized the diamond and the heir to the throne, Duleep Singh, and sent both to Queen Victoria. There is a legend of an ancient curse on the Kohinoor which says that any male who owns it will possess the world but all its miseries too. Queen Victoria didn’t suffer the curse, but her male successors were plagued with world wars, abdications and genetic infirmities.

So William, beware. The crown with the Kohinoor should go straight onto Queen Kate’s head. The option, of course, is to return the Kohinoor to India immediately. Sonia Gandhi and President Patil are both female.

— The writer is a London-based scriptwriter
Email: d_farrukh@dnaindia.net