Thai princess dies at 84

Princess Galyani Vadhana, the elder sister of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died today aged 84.

Her death came after the 80-year-old king himself recovered from the symptoms of a stroke after being admitted to hospital for three weeks in October. Both were tended to at Bangkok’s Siriraj Hospital.

Princess Galyani had been in hospital since June, after doctors found she had abdominal cancer.

In a statement issued hours before her passing, the royal palace said her kidneys were not functioning and her breathing had weakened.

The late princess was noted for her interest in the arts, especially theatre and classical music, a taste cultivated when she, like the king, was educated in Switzerland, where she spent much time until later life.

She spoke five languages, and loved to travel, documenting many of her journeys in books. Known to be modest and self-effacing, she told an interviewer in 2000 that: “I don’t like gala dinners. They’re boring.”

Galyani was the oldest child of Prince Mahidol – a son of King Chulalongkorn - and his commoner wife, Sangwal.

All three of their children were born abroad, where Prince Mahidol travelled and studied medicine. Galyani was born in London on May 6, 1923.

The family’s early life was difficult, with Prince Mahidol dying in 1929, leaving his wife to raise the three children alone.

After Thailand’s absolute monarchy was abolished following a 1932 coup d’etat, Sangwal and her children moved to Switzerland to be away from the maelstrom of politics.

In 1935, Galyani’s other brother, Ananda, was named king, though he was to spend most of the next decade, including the Second World War, in neutral Switzerland.

“We were in a small country and we were just monsieur, mademoiselle, not prince or princess,” she recalled in 2000. “Some people did not know we were a royal family. We were like Swiss children and we knew a simple life of ordinary people.”

Tragedy struck the family again, when Ananda, back on a visit to Thailand in 1946, was found shot dead in his bedroom in the Grand Palace under circumstances that have never been cleared up. Bhumibol succeeded him as king, and is now the world’s longest reigning monarch.

Galyani married Col Aram Ratanakul Serireungriddhi, a royal aide but a commoner, in 1944, which meant she had to give up the royal title she was awarded in 1935.

The couple had a daughter but were divorced in 1949. The royal title was restored by Bhumibol in 1950, after the divorce.

She married again in 1969 to Prince Varananda Dhavaj, a professional pilot, who died in 1990.

Perhaps the most cosmopolitan of her generation of royals, Galyani taught French language and literature at Thai universities after her post-war return from Switzerland, though she had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Lausanne.

A lifelong Francophile, she founded the Association of Teachers of French in Thailand, which she headed in 1977-81.

She also took up an intensive schedule of charity work, which is a mainstay of royal responsibility. She was a patron of at least five health-related foundations.

“My father was a doctor and my mother was a nurse. I suppose that has something to do with my work (on charities),” she said. “I lived a long time in Switzerland and when I came back to Thailand I saw there was much to be done in every domain.”

Galyani is survived by her daughter from her first marriage and a grandson.