Thibaw's mother had been banished from the palace court by Mindon and spent her final years as a thilashin, a kind of female Burmese Buddhist renunciant.

[2] One of Mindon's chief consorts, the Queen of the Middle Palace, Hsinbyumashin, helped to broker a marriage between her eldest daughter, Supayagyi and Thibaw, who were half-siblings by blood.

[4] A proclamation issued by the court of King Thibaw in 1885 which called on his countrymen to conquer Lower Burma was used by the British as pretext that he was a tyrant who reneged on his treaties and they decided to complete the conquest they had started in 1824.

The invasion force which consisted of 11,000 men, a fleet of flat-bottomed boats and elephant batteries, was led by General Harry Prendergast.

Main article - Exile of Thibaw Min British troops quickly reached the royal capital of Mandalay with little opposition.

The following morning, King Thibaw was forced on a bullock cart, along with his family, and proceeded to a steamer on the Irrawaddy River, in the presence of a huge crowd of subjects.

During their first 24 years in India, Thibaw's family lived at Outram Hall, in Dharangaon, inland from Ratanagiri, but in 1906 the Government agreed to spend over 125,000 rupees (c. £9000) to construct a new official residence for them.

[6] The family then moved into a grand two-story brick building, colloquially "Thibaw's Palace," built of laterite and lava rock, set in 20 acres (8.1 ha) of gardens.

[7] He died at age 57 on 15 December 1916 and was buried in a small walled plot adjacent to a Christian cemetery, along with one of his consorts, Hteiksu Phaya Galay.

Gyi and Tutu lived in poverty and survived by making paper flowers to sell on the markets, as Sawant took all of her pension from the British government; he did however buy them a house.

[11] In December 2012, the president of Burma Thein Sein paid homage at the tomb of the king in Ratnagiri and met the late monarch's descendants.