Katya & The Prince of Siam

Chavalit was often at Paruskavan, where she was well liked for she interfered in no way with the running of the house but, like the charming child she was, enlivened its rather sombre atmosphere after Katya had departed. In due time, Chakrabongse, as he was bound to do, applied to the King for the royal assent to his marriage to Chavalit. To his amazement, he met with a peremptory refusal based on the grounds that Chavalit was his niece. As such near relationships in royal circles had always been of small importance, Chakrabongse persisted in his demand and, on its being again refused, enlisted his mother’s help to plead his cause. Unsympathetic at first, she later supported him, but the monarch remained obdurate.

Unused as she was to being thwarted, the Queen was very angry and as a mark of her displeasure, for several days refused to take the numerous pills and potions prescribed for her, but still to no avail. This situation led to an almost open breach between the two brothers and the Queen was so incensed that the next time the King called to see her, she turned her back and would not speak to him. Vajiravudh sat patiently in unbroken silence in her room for one hour, till he rose and with due ceremony took his leave, little knowing that it would be for the last time.

It is difficult to believe that his attitude towards his brother’s remarriage was only governed by a rather sudden disapproval of the close blood relationship between Chavalit and Chakrabongse. Apart from the many consanguineous royal marriages, their own grandmother, Princess Ramperi, was their grandfather King Mongkut’s great niece.

Surely it is more likely that the unmarried childless King feared the ascendancy of his more popular brother, whom he may have secretly thought better suited for kingship than himself. Such being the case, it would not have been unnatural that now Chakrabongse’s position as Heir Presumptive had been enhanced by his no longer having a foreign wife, the King was unwilling to improve his stature further by sanctioning his marriage to a highly eligible princess of his own race. Whether this is so or not, his brother’s behaviour wounded Chakrabongse deeply and injured their relationship irreparably.

As for Chavalit, she came to live at Paruskavan and was soon generally regarded as Chakrabongse’s common law wife. She fitted gracefully and unobtrusively into this role and continued her affectionate teasing, slightly flirtatious, relationship with the eleven year old Chula. The latter still spent part of every weekend with his grandmother, who now seldom left her bed and was becoming disinclined for news of the outside world.

Nevertheless, when her doctor was summoned to her bedside on 20th October 1919, he was not unduly alarmed suspecting it was due to ‘one of the usual attacks of nephritis brought on by her artificial way of life’. However, this time the attack was of increased severity and, because there was no resistance left in her debilitated body, within a few hours she was dead.

Chula, summoned home from school, had no premonition of what had happened until he arrived at Paruskavan, when seeing that the servants assembled in the hall all wore black mourning armbands and black pasin skirts, he guessed at once that his grandmother had died.

Later when his father returned from Phya Thai, his son, until then numbed with shock, ran to meet him at the top of the stairs, where Chakrabongse holding him close, broke into bitter weeping. Chula’s tears were also now released and it is touching to imagine them, locked in each other’s arms, racked with sobs, comforting one another. ‘The first and only time I ever saw my father cry.’

The elaborate funeral ceremonies, beginning with the bathing of the body before it was lifted into the ornate royal urn, proceeded according to time honoured ritual, the urn being carried in procession to the Dusit Maha Prasad Hall of the Grand Palace, reserved solely for the Coronation and lying-in-state of Sovereigns. There, surrounded by her regalia and beneath the seven white umbrellas, symbolising her Queenly rank, the urn would rest for seven months, during which time, a weekly memorial service was attended by the King, Royal Family and various dignitaries. Then in June 1920, the urn borne in the huge golden funeral coach, was cremated in the specially constructed royal crematorium on the Pramane ground in front of the Grand Palace.

 

 

Prince Chakrabongse seated on a palanquin during the funeral procession of Queen Saowabha.

 

 

The royal urn and meru of Queen Saowabha 1919.