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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⚠️New on #SecretSiam — In August I published a story on Vajiralongkorn's new favourite concubine. It was a tale of parachuting concubines, cryptic cartoons, symbolic silver heart-shaped pendants, & a mysterious woman identified by the colour pink & the code number 002. 🧵1/35
Since then, things got even stranger. The biggest bombshell is the reappearance of consort Sineenat “Koi” Bilaskalayani. Other concubines are also amassing more influence. And all of this may have a connection with Queen Suthida taking part in a yachting race in Mallorca. 3/35
In 1967, Britain's ambassador to Bangkok sent a cable to London that was highly insulting about the intelligence and character of Thais, and scornful about Thai culture. 42 years later it caused a minor diplomatic kerfuffle. A 🧵 1/15
For centuries, until the practice was stopped by the government in 2006, there was a tradition for British ambassadors departing a posting to write a valedictory despatch, in which they threw all diplomatic niceties to the wind and gave their uncensored opinions 2/15
Christopher Meyer, who was ambassador to Berlin and then Washington, wrote about the practice in The Telegraph in 2015. 3/15tomfletcher.global/articles/detai…
⚠️ UPDATE — I have more details from royal and medical sources about what happened to Princess Bajrakitiyabha last Wednesday, and also spoke to a specialist foreign-based ICU and trauma consultant to help interpret the information. 1/
To make this clear once again, I have no personal animosity against the princess, and while everybody knows I am not a fan of King Vajiralongkorn, his grief is clearly genuine and he deserves compassion and understanding right now. 2/13
But the people of Thailand also deserve to be told the truth, instead of being dragged into days or weeks of royalist theatrics to pray for the recovery of a woman who has already been dead for four days according to any sensible definition of what it means to die. 3/13
⚠️ UPDATE — Here is the latest on what we know so far about the death of Princess Bajrakitiyabha on Wednesday and what will happen next. You can also read the post on Facebook: facebook.com/zenjournalist/… 1/26
The latest information from royal sources is that the palace may try to keep her artificially alive on an ECMO machine at Chulalongkorn Hospital for days, maybe even until after New Year, at which point they will turn off the machine and announce she has died. 2/26
They're worried that if New Year festivities are cancelled and the tourism & hospitality industries take another hit at this crucial time of year, after all the pain they suffered during the pandemic, it will further inflame anti-monarchy sentiment which is already rampant. 3/26
⚠️UPDATE — Here is what we know so far about the health emergency suffered by Princess Bajrakitiyabha yesterday. While running with her dogs in Khao Yai national park she had a heart attack. She is only 44 years old. 1/9
She was initially taken to Pak Chong Nana Hospital where CPR was attempted for hours without success. Vajiralongkorn rushed to the hospital in a military helicopter. 2/9
A decision was made that the only viable option was to fly her to Bangkok for ECMO treatment, which is a way of keeping people alive when their heart and lungs cannot function en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorp… 3/9
A fascinating note written by former prime minister written by former Sanya Dharmasakti in June 1979, while he was head of the Privy Council, details the meddling of Queen Sirikit and the rifts in the palace. 1/14
The note says Sirikit's political meddling was causing severe problems in Thailand and the royal family had become "completely divided". It says King Bhumibol had warned that Sirikit became violent when angry. The situation was getting "getting more serious every day". 2/14
According to the document, Sirikit wanted Bhumibol to abdicate on October 14, 1973, when Thailand's military dictators fled into exile after a student uprising and the country entered a period of democracy. He was persuaded not to abdicate by his advisor Vasit Dejkunjorn. 3/14