A 400-Yr-Old 'Curse' Haunting India’s Richest Royal Family!

For much of their 600-year-old history, the Wadiyar dynasty—rulers of the erstwhile kingdom of Mysore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka—has been trying to unsuccessfully ward off a deadly curse.

“May the Wadiyars of Mysore not have children for eternity,” Alamelamma, the wife of a king whose empire the Wadiyars annexed, is thought to have said sometime back in the 1600s. And 400 years later, that curse seems to have done its job.

On May 27, the royal family—considered one of the richest in India—appointed 22-year-old Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar as the new heir to the throne following the death of 60-year-old Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar in December 2013. Yaduveer is not the former king’s biological son, but a distant nephew.