Hated Son May Take Thai King’s Crown After Shock Twist

As a teenager, Prince Vacharaesorn Vivacharawongse, the second son of the present king of Thailand, was left in little doubt about the contempt in which his father held him.

Not content with banning “Vach” (pronounced “Vatch”) from the country along with his siblings, his father, the mercurial King Maha Vajiralongkorn, refused to pay his school fees at Harrow. His half-sister from a later marriage, Princess Bajrakitiyabha, was installed as heir apparent instead of him after a series of feuds in the court of Thailand’s royal family.

When Vach moved to America to train as a lawyer, he was forced to hawk vacuum cleaners door to door to make ends meet.

But everything changed in December last year when Princess Bajrakitiyabha was struck down by what is thought to be a massive brain aneurysm while out walking her dog. She is now widely believed to be in an irreversible coma, although the palace has not confirmed this.

Still, it was regarded by many as almost miraculous when social media footage emerged this weekend of Vach, 42, arriving at Bangkok airport after an absence of almost three decades.

On Tuesday, confirmation of his presence in the country came via an official visit to a children’s charity in Bangkok. Vach told reporters: “I am delighted to return... I have been away for a long time, 27 years… It is like a dream come true to be back.”

Vach, who is seen as a pro-reform modernizer, is now being talked about as the new heir apparent in fevered gossip across the nation. There have been reports of ordinary Thais weeping at the possibility of a liberal, progressive, American-educated lawyer who counts former German President Christian Wulff as a friend, taking on the throne after the regressive proto-medievalism of King Vajiralongkorn’s reign.

Official and online local media will not breathe a word of the speculation, however, for fear of breaking the country’s harsh so-called “lèse-majesté” rules, which prohibit even jokes being made about the monarch, on pain of a maximum of 15 years of imprisonment.

These rules are still enforced by the country’s courts, which are effectively controlled by the military after a coup in 2014. The coup leaders cleverly used the monarchy, which is still revered and deified by huge swathes of the population, to confer legitimacy on itself.

A recent example of this was provided by the banning of a new book, entitled Rama X: The Thai Monarchy under King Vajiralongkorn edited by exiled writer Pavin Chachavalpongpun. The book was the subject of a notice in the Royal Gazette saying its importation or sale was banned under the country’s strict laws.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Chachavalpongpun said that the kneejerk response to his new book, which is an anthology of writing about the monarchy by a variety of writers, showed the monarchy’s weakness and paranoia.

“Any regime that is strong wouldn’t have to worry about a book,” said Chachavalpongpun, who wrote two of the chapters himself. “My views are well-known, and of course I am not going to write a book celebrating the monarchy, but the fact they have banned it before even reading the book shows how ridiculous they are.”

The palace’s extreme sensitivity to criticism certainly coincides with a moment of danger and crisis for King Vajiralongkorn, 71, who is facing an unprecedented political challenge after Princess Bajrakitiyabha’s hospitalization.

She has been on life support ever since she was taken ill, with informed sources saying she is in a somatic coma.

In May this year, an anti-establishment and anti-royal political party won a sweeping electoral victory, on a ticket of reining in the limitless power of the royal family, fuelled in part by the information vacuum around the succession, as well as a half-decade of stories about the king’s excesses and eccentricities.

These astonishing tales make their way into the country via the internet despite local rules. The notorious stories have have included the king buying a fleet of 38 jets for his personal use; renting out entire floors of German hotels for months on end to house his multiple wives and concubines; persistent rumors that he is dying of HIV-related illnesses, and the allegation that he broke his sister’s ankles by jumping on her legs after she failed to approach him by crawling on her belly as custom dictates.

The opposition party Move Forward won 151 out of 500 seats in the House of Representatives, and subsequently put together a pro-reform coalition of 312 seats. However the 250 seat senate, stuffed with royal and military appointees, refused to confirm its leader as prime minister. Negotiations continue but it seems likely an avowed monarchist will shortly be given the job and form an anti-democratic minority administration.

Many observers have assumed that the country is bound to slide back into authoritarianism and illegitimate rule. Chachavalpongpun, for example, told The Daily Beast, “Things have definitely been getting worse.”

However the arrival of Vach is a truly remarkable development, and there are real signs that he could make big changes if he were to ascend to the throne. In an intriguing Facebook post on July 10, Vach reposted a quote from The Economist which attacked the “regime for having “stacked the senate with its stooges” in a “reckless” attack on democracy which it warned could spark a “disorderly transition.”

Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a former Reuters bureau chief in Bangkok with excellent contacts among the Thai elite who writes the Secret Siam Substack, cautioned that Vach may yet find his wings clipped by the “military and establishment blob” that still controls much of the country’s day to day workings.

“There is a strong likelihood that he will be the next monarch,” Marshall told The Daily Beast, “That is the only explanation for why he has been allowed back. I think he will be a good monarch and he would be popular and he would undoubtedly want to start the process of reform.

“The question is whether he would actually be able to effect those changes or whether he would end up being manipulated and thwarted by the entrenched palace networks.”