Katya & The Prince of Siam

Meanwhile in Bangkok, despite their bright beginnings, Vajiravudh’s matrimonial plans clouded with uncertainty and ended with a bleak statement in March 1921 that ‘owing to incompatibility’ his engagement to Vallabha Devi was at an end. Later that same year the King made it known that he would now wed Vallabha Devi’s sister, Laksami, which he actually did in August 1922, raising her to the rank of junior Queen. What heartache and unhappiness lay behind these curt announcements can only be imagined, for neither of the two sisters revealed their feelings, and Vajiravudh’s journals have never been made public. Even now, sad to say, things did not go well even for the lovely Laksami, for she bore no children and eventually the royal pair decided to live apart, though continuing in the time-worn words ‘to be good friends’.

These unfortunate experiences eventually terminated the King’s preference for monogamy, for in October 1921 and January 1922, he suddenly took to wife two well-born sisters Prueng and Prabal Sucharitakul. The younger of the two, after suffering several miscarriages, was demoted from the title of Supreme Queen to being a mere queen and, to add to her pain and humiliation, heard that yet another lady – Suvadhana – was expecting His Majesty’s child. One cannot but feel for the unhappy monarch, so belatedly anxious to do his duty and provide an heir to his throne, whilst also sparing a sympathetic thought for the unfortunate ladies involved in this frantic quest.

To add to Vajiravudh’s tribulations, during these five years the deaths of his two full brothers, Chutadhuj in 1923 and Asdang in 1925, left only the Monarch himself and his younger brother Prajadhipok – whose health had never been good – as sole remaining representatives in the line of succession from Chulalongkorn and Saowabha. As by an act of 1924, the King had reserved to himself the traditional right to name his successor, it was generally assumed that unless a son was born to Vajiravudh, Prajadhipok would succeed him.

In the same act, the King had also decreed that if he remained childless, Chula’s father, Chakrabongse, would have been next in line and Chula after him. But as the act went on to lay it down that any prince married to a foreigner forfeited the right to the throne, this posthumously disqualified Chakrabongse and therefore Chula.

Long afterwards, looking back on the Act of 1924, Chula has this to say in his book Brought up in England: ‘This act had a nuisance value for me. Up till then, no-one had connected me with the throne or bothered their heads about me, but the act made people conscious that I was the nearest heir to Vajiravudh by ties of blood and should have succeeded him had my mother not been Russian. After that everything I said or did was suspect; either I was scheming to get the throne or I was resentful at being disqualified.’

 

 

Prince Chula shortly before leaving for England.

 

 

The royal urn of Prince Asdang Dejavudh, 1925

 

 

The royal urn of Prince Chutadhuj Dharadilok in the same room as where that of his elder brother Prince Chakrabongse had been, 1923.

 

Towards the end of 1925, Vajiravudh in poor health, distressed by the failure of his matrimonial ventures and burdened with heavy debt mostly due to his personal over-generosity, fell very ill, and the news that Queen Suvadhana had given birth to his child was brought to him only on his death-bed. Gently caressing the baby girl, whose sex debarred her from succeeding him, he murmured resignedly, ‘Perhaps it is just as well’. Then knowing that death was near, he requested he should be moved to the Grand Palace where he sent for his brother Prajadhipok, whom he had indeed named as his successor and, after lingering on a few days, he died on 26th November.

During these years Chula was embarking on the struggles of an English education. At first he was tutored in a small semi-detached house in Brighton by a clergyman. For him and his wife he has nothing but praise, saying, ‘he was a splendid teacher’, who took infinite pains to teach the young Prince colloquial English and the rudiments of French. ‘It was a far cry from Paruskavan’, he says cheerfully, describing how he tucked in to his first supper of tinned tomato soup and tinned salmon. When taken to church by the worthy pair, though dismayed by the plainness of the simple brick building compared with the glittering splendour of Siamese temples, he managed to explain in his rapidly improving English that, as he could hear no difference between the teaching of Jesus and the Buddha, he saw no reason to change his religion. His reasoning was clearly effective for, following his explanation, neither the tutor nor his wife discussed the matter with him again.