Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha dies after more than three years in coma
According to the statement made by the royal family, Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who has been in a coma for more than three years, has died. He was 47 years old.
He collapsed while exercising with his dogs in December 2022. His doctors attributed this to a severely irregular heartbeat caused by a mycoplasma infection in his heart.
With his death, the Thai royal family lost its most visible member and someone who may have played a key role in an as yet uncertain succession.
He was the eldest of King Vajiralongkorn’s seven children and was born on 7 December 1978 to his first wife and cousin, Princess Soamsawali.
[Reuters]
“The medical team provided the closest and most intensive care possible, but his condition continued to gradually deteriorate,” the Palace said in a statement Friday morning. he said, adding that the woman passed away at Chulalongkorn Hospital the previous day at 19:48 local time (12:48 GMT).
He trained as a lawyer and received two master’s degrees from Cornell University in the USA. He worked briefly at the Thailand mission to the United Nations in New York before returning to Thailand to work in the Attorney General’s offices in Bangkok and elsewhere in the country.
Princess (L) with her father King Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida in 2020 [Getty Images]
From 2012 to 2014, he served as Thailand’s ambassador to Austria, where he established relations with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
She began speaking out about the need for penal reform, focusing particularly on vulnerable women entering prison; Thailand is one of the countries with the highest number of female prisoners in the world.
On his return to Thailand, he became UNODC’s Rule of Law Ambassador in Southeast Asia and continued to advocate for reform of Thailand’s criminal justice system, where harsh sentences are often imposed on people convicted of relatively minor drug possession charges.
In 2021, his father made him chief of staff of his personal bodyguard and granted him the rank of general.
Princess Bajrakitiyabha was also a fitness enthusiast who often participated in long-distance running.
Princess Bajrakitiyabha in Bangkok in 2015 [Getty Images]
His abilities and his father’s confidence in him made him an inevitable subject of speculation regarding royal succession.
King Vajiralongkorn, 73, has not yet named an heir. According to Thai traditions, the heir must be a man, but with the amendment made to the constitution in 1974, a woman is allowed to take the throne.
The King has five sons, but four from his second marriage were disowned in 1996 and have since lived with their mother in the US. Dipangkorn, his fifth son by his third wife, is presumed to be the heir apparent, but questions arise about his ability to fulfill the role of ruler in a country where the royal institution carries so much influence.
To many Thai royalists, Princess Bajrakitiyabha seemed the most promising person to succeed her father, either as queen or as a regent to assist Prince Dipangkorn.
His death leaves the question of succession in Thailand unanswered, and the rigidity of the country’s lese majeste law prevents it from being discussed publicly.
