It’s the first wedding anniversary of King Rama X and his fourth wife, Suthida “Nui” Tidjai, who were married on May 1, 2019, shortly before Vajiralongkorn’s coronation ceremonies. 1/14
The couple met on January 5, 2007, when Vajiralongkorn piloted a special Thai Airways charity flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Suthida was one of the flight attendants. 2/14
She soon became Vajiralongkorn’s favourite mistress, and he soon abandoned his third wife Srirasmi to spend most of the year living in Munich with Suthida. 3/14
As a leaked US cable explained: “Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn has spent most (up to 75%) of the past two years based in Europe (primarily at a villa at a medicinal spa 20km outside of Munich), with his leading mistress and beloved white poodle Fufu wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0… 4/14
In 2014, Vajiralongkorn finally divorced Srirasmi, and in a brutal purge of her family, jailed her parents, her three brothers, a sister, her uncle who had been chief of the police Crime Suppression Division, and several other relatives. 5/14
Suthida was now the most senior of the king’s harem. But the king was already getting bored of her.
He soon had another favourite, Niramon “Koi” Ounprom, a former nurse at the army’s Mahidol Hospital, who he renamed Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi. 6/14
Vajiralongkorn began spending most of his time at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Bavaria with Koi and a harem of many more women.
He rarely saw Suthida, who began living at the Hotel Waldegg in the Swiss town of Engelberg. 7/14 waldegg-engelberg.ch
The couple rarely met except for royal ceremonies in Bangkok, and Suthida often appeared to be profoundly unhappy. Footage of her at the opening of the 2018 “winter fair” showed her close to tears. 8/14 facebook.com/zenjournalist/…
She was humiliated even more in July last year when Vajiralongkorn officially elevated Koi to the position of Noble Consort. It was the first time in almost a century that a Thai monarch officially had a consort and openly embraced polygamy. 9/14
In October last year, Koi was dramatically stripped of her title and jailed. This removed the threat to Suthida, for the moment. But she still lives apart from the king, in Engelberg, while Vajiralongkorn enjoys himself in Bavaria with around 20 concubines. 10/14
When Vajiralongkorn visits Suthida in Switzerland, he brings his harem with him. Like his past wives, Suthida just has to accept the king’s compulsive infidelity.
All of Vajiralongkorn’s past wives have been treated brutally and eventually discarded. 11/14
Soamsawali was abandoned soon after he married her, and later humiliated and divorced. Yuvathida “Benz” Polpraserth was banished from Thailand in 1996. Srirasmi was forced into house arrest in Rachaburi with most of her family jailed. Koi is in prison too. 12/14
The risk that the same will happen to her hangs over Suthida every day. It must be difficult to be happy, when you live with the fear of suddenly losing everything. Although she has more wealth than she ever dreamed of, her life is sad and lonely. 13/14
Her marriage is not a fairytale. It’s a nightmare. 14/14
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