A spectacular insect much sought after by collectors, the species epithet is after Dr R. Lidderdale, from whose collection the butterfly was first described by William Stephen Atkinson in 1873.

Listed under CITES Appendix II, the status of the butterfly has been recorded as rare by some authorities but as being of least concern in 2019 by the Red Book of the IUCN.

[1] The sexes of the Bhutan glory are identical in appearance, having long rounded forewings with convex termen and many-tailed hindwings.

Hind wing with similar ochraceous white lines more or less in continuation of those on the forewing with the addition of a broad line along vein 1 and the median vein, these two lines do not reach much beyond the base of vein 4; a large lower discal patch, the inward half scarlet, the outer half velvety-black, followed by broad subterminal bright yellow lunules in interspaces 1 to 4; the tails edged very narrowly with ochraceous white; the black on the outer half of the discal patch has in interspaces 1 and 2 very large ill-defined superposed white spots thickly shaded with brownish grey except along their inner margins.

He writes:[5] This fine insect was first discovered in May 1868, near Buxa, in the Bhutan Himalayas, at an elevation of 5000 feet, by Dr R. Lidderdale, of the Bengal Army.

Specimens were later procured by Mr. A. V. Knyvett, then Inspector of Police, who gave them to Mr. Elwes …The butterfly is found in Bhutan and northeastern India (Assam, Sikkim, Manipur and Nagaland).

These subspecies (with type localities) are:[8] The Bhutan glory has been considered to be "rare" by Indian authors such as William Harry Evans (1932),[4] Mark Alexander Wynter-Blyth (1957)[9] and Isaac Kehimkar (2009).

[10] However Collins and Morris (1985) in the IUCN Red Data Book on the threatened swallowtails of the world gives it a status of "insufficiently known" arguing that the Bhutan glory is widely distributed and hence unlikely to be in danger at the moment though more information is needed on this comparatively poorly known species.

Flies at tree-top level, with a slow, drifting, unpredictable flight akin to that of the tree nymph (Idea lynceus).

Seen from above it must be much more conspicuous and in no doubt a protected insect; at the same time its weak flight may even add to its chance of escape as it certainly does with Hestia, for it is impossible to calculate the direction in which it is making.