The billionaire who was the world’s longest-serving monarch
Bhumibol Adulyadej did not
expect to become the king of
Thailand, said The Times.
His father was the 69th of 77 children born to King Chulalongkorn, the fifth monarch of the House of Chakri – and Bhumibol was not a firstborn son, either. But when his older brother was found dead in mysterious circumstances in 1946, the king of Thailand was what he became. By the time he died last week, aged 88, he was the world’s longest-serving monarch, regarded as a demigod in his home country, commanding – and apparently receiving – unquestioning devotion. His picture was displayed in every Thai household (it is considered disrespectful for commoners to point their feet at it), and his subjects often prostrated themselves before him. Bhumibol – revered as “Brother of the Moon, Half-brother of the Sun, and Possessor of the Twenty-four Golden Umbrellas” – had realised early on that it was vital to preserve the crown’s mystique, and protected it through the draconian application of the country’s lese-majesty laws. “The moment you take away the mystique,” he said, “the moment you expose the institution to the daily scrutiny of the modern media, you’ve had it.”
Prince Somdet Phra Chao Yu Hua Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in 1927 in the US, where his father – the half-brother of the last absolute monarch of Thailand – was studying at Harvard. It was his great-grandfather, King Mongkut, who hired an English tutor named Anna Leonowens, a story that inspired the musical The King and I. Bhumibol did not like the film, nor its depiction of his ancestor. The family briefly returned to Thailand after his father’s death, in 1929, but when the absolute monarchy was brought to an end by a bloodless coup in 1932, they moved to Switzerland, where he became fluent in English and French.
In 1945, he and his brother Ananda returned to Thailand, for Ananda’s coronation. But before the ceremony could take place, Ananda was found dead with a bullet in his skull, and a pistol by his side. Bhumibol succeeded him – but was not crowned until 1950, by which time he’d married his wife, Queen Sirikit, and lost the sight in one eye in a car crash. He loved fast cars and won medals for sailing, and was also a talented jazz saxophonist and composer.
On assuming the throne, he realised that to stop communism infecting his nation, he had to address poverty in Thailand, said The Daily Telegraph. Thus Bhumibol – the world’s only Buddhist monarch – supported countless charitable causes and spent much of the year visiting remote areas, driving down dusty roads in a convoy of 40 jeeps. His own fortune was estimated at $30bn. He had few actual powers, but he used his moral authority to restrain the excesses of Thailand’s various military rulers, and came to be seen as a unifying force in a country that experienced numerous coups during his 70-year reign. In 1992, when Thailand was engulfed in violence, the king summoned the leaders of the junta and the prodemocracy movement to his palace; he made them crawl towards him, then urged them to cooperate. Civilian rule was later restored. More recently, he was accused of backing the coup that deposed the democratically elected Thaksin government in 2006.
Bhumibol suffered a stroke in 2007, and had been in poor health ever since. His heir, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, seems to have inherited little of his father’s reserve. A scandal-prone playboy, he is best known for promoting his poodle, Foo Foo, to a senior rank in the Thai air force. In 2007, footage emerged of the prince’s third wife, naked save for a G-string, feeding Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo pieces of cake; that same year, the dog reportedly turned up to a reception hosted by the US ambassador, dressed in formal evening attire. But what the Thai public made of it all is unclear: with insulting the royal family a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail, Thais tend to keep their own counsel.