Katya & The Prince of Siam

On 13th June, his unhappy son was awakened early and led to his dying father’s bedside. He later described the scene with words that convey in stark simplicity the anguish he felt:

 

‘I was then twelve years old. I helped to join his hands together in prayer and tried to make him repeat the name of the Buddha, which I had been taught was the best thing one could do at the approach of death. He was able to do so, but would occasionally relapse into delirious mutterings. He was thirsty but could only take water in small spoonfuls. He fought magnificently. Then he could no longer drink even a spoonful of water. At 1.50 pm he died. As the English doctor bent down to close his eyes, I think I must have aged about ten years. After making the profoundest obeisance to my father’s corpse, I then left the room and asked the aide-de-camp to send a cable to my mother.

‘More vividly than when my grandmother died, I realised that the life I had known or expected to have, was quite at an end, and henceforth I would stand completely alone.’

 

That same evening Prince Prajadhipok, Chakrabongse’s youngest brother, arrived with his wife Princess Rambai Barni and the long drawn-out tragic return to Siam was set in motion. Along a road lined with British troops, on a Royal Garrison Artillery gun carriage, the coffin, covered with the Siamese flag and accompanied by a full military band, wound its way slowly to the railway station while the guns at Canning Fort fired a thirty-seven gun salute - one salute for each year of Chakrabongse’s life.

A halt on this last journey before reaching the capital, was made at Hua Hin, scene of much simple happiness which had ended so suddenly and unexpectedly. Virtually the entire village turned out to show respect and to mourn not only a prince but a friendly and well-liked neighbour. On arrival at Bangkok, when the cortege was met by the King and all the Royal Family, the officer in charge of a battalion of King Chulalongkorn’s Own Bodyguard was so distressed by the occasion, that he was barely able to utter the words of command.

There followed the lengthy lying-in-state in what had been the ballroom at Paruskavan. As with his mother just eight months before, Chakrabongse’s body was encased in a metal urn which in turn was housed in an elaborately carved wooden urn decorated with gold leaf and precious stones. Before the fateful trip and following the death of his mother, Chakrabongse had mused out loud to his son, ‘When I die you will have to arrange for the ceiling to be pierced to accommodate the urn’, little thinking that his prophecy would come true so soon and that an octagonal hole would indeed have to be cut, a task organised by another of Chakrabongse’s brothers, the architect Prince Asdang. In the room amidst a profusion of flowers and candles, were displayed not only the deceased’s regalia, but all his uniforms and many foreign decorations, including the splendid scarlet of the last Russian Emperor’s Own Hussar Guards - a poignant reminder of the forever vanished past.

 

 

A copy of Prince Chakrabongse’s revised will made while very ill leaving everything to Princess Chavalit including the guardianship of Prince Chula.

 

Everyone was kind to Chula, bereft of his mother, grandmother and above all his revered father, in the space of a few short months. During the customary 100 days before his cremation, the Prince was sincerely mourned, not only by his family as they gathered for the customary weekly services in his memory, but by the nation as a whole.