The last scions of the Konbaung dynasty gathered in the former seat of royal power as monks chanted prayers to mark the end of their family's reign, the first time they have publicly marked King Thibaw's exile to India 130 years ago inside the palace.
Among them was Prince Paw Thaya, one of only two surviving grandchildren of the last monarch, now both in their 90s.
"The British tried to keep us away from the common people. But... Still today the common people will pay respects to royalty," he added.
Thibaw was only on the throne for seven years before British troops swept into Mandalay on November 28, 1885 and ordered his family to leave the country the very next day.
The sight of the monarch and his heavily pregnant wife being paraded through the streets on old bullock carts as his subjects wept and prostrated themselves was a humiliation that has been seared on Myanmar's collective memory ever since.
The junta that seized power in 1962 also sidelined the family, seeking instead to reinvent themselves as the successors to the warrior kings of old during a half-century rule that ruined Myanmar's economy and closed its people off from much of the outside world.
But interest in the monarchy reignited under the quasi-civilian government that took power five years ago when former president Thein Sein, a reformist general, visited Thibaw's tomb in the Indian seaside town of Ratnagiri.
In October they held a ceremony to commemorate the death of Thibaw's father King Mindon in the palace and they also plan to hold a commemoration in India in December to mark Thibaw's death in exile 100 years ago.
"This ceremony is not only for the family members," one of Thibaw's great-grandsons, Soe Win, told AFP at the palace.
"We lost our independence. Not only independence - the whole country's identity.
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