BANGKOK.- The princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidoleldest daughter of the king of Thailand, Maha Vajiralongkorndied this Thursday at the age of 47. The announcement was made by the Thai Royal Palace. The woman had been hospitalized in a coma for more than three years.after suffering a sudden illness.
The only daughter from the first marriage of monarch Vajiralongkorn suffered from an abdominal infection and “his condition continued to worsen” from 2022 until “he passed away peacefully,” the Royal Household Office indicated in a statement.
With the death of theprincess bha”, as it was known in its country, the Thai royal family lost a member who could have played a fundamental role in a still uncertain succession.
Daughter of King Vajiralongkorn and Princess Soamsawali, Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol was born on December 7, 1978. She trained as a lawyer and earned two graduate degrees from Cornell University.in the United States. He worked briefly at the Thai mission to the United Nations in New York, before returning to Thailand to work in the Attorney General’s offices in Bangkok and other parts of the country.
Once she became a lawyer, she began to express the need for penal reform, focusing especially on vulnerable women who ended up in prison, since Thailand has one of the highest numbers of female prisoners in the world.
Between 2012 and 2014 she was Thailand’s ambassador to Austria, where she established a relationship with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Undoc).
His body will be laid to rest at the Grand Palace in Bangkok and his funeral will be held “with the highest honors according to royal tradition“They added from the Thai Royal Palace. On the other hand, they detailed that during May his health had deteriorated and that he depended on medical devices to maintain his lung and kidney functions, as well as medication.
As a princess, Bajrakitiyabha played an important ceremonial role in Thai society, where the royal family is at the top. She was considered close to her father and was appointed to a high-ranking position in the monarch’s personal guard command just a year before her hospitalization.
King Vajiralongkorn, 73, has not yet made a decision regarding an heir. Thai custom dictates that it must be male, but a 1974 constitutional amendment allows a woman to take the throne.
The king has five children, but four of them, the fruit of his second marriage, They were disowned in 1996 and have lived with their mother in the United States since then.. His fifth son, Dipangkorn, from his third marriage, is the heir presumptive, although questions have been raised about his ability to fulfill the role of monarch in a country where the royal institution has so much influence.
In Thailand there are strict rules governing what can and cannot be said about the royal family, which is protected from criticism by lese majeste laws. which provide prison sentences of up to 15 years for each charge.
With information from AFP.
