Keywords

The case of Ananda and Marileine serves to exemplify the remaining restriction on interracial matrimony. This chapter examines other well-known cases to demonstrate the severity of castigations as a result of interracial wedlock. Royal elites were seeking to delegitimize the influence of Western elements in order to maintain their power position. For the purpose of this study, three main cases are selected to illuminate the consequences of royal matrimony with Westerners: the marriages of Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath (son of King Chulalongkorn) with Russian-born Ekaterina Ivanovna Desnitsky (including that of their son—Prince Chula Chakrabongse with an English wife, Elizabeth Hunter), Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya (eldest daughter of King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit) and American Peter Ladd Jensen, and lastly, and for the purpose of cross-country comparison, Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) and Queen Norodom Monineath. Whereas the first two cases establish how the Thai royal family depicted Westerners as threatening to the kingdom and also extrinsic to the Thai identity, the last case offers an opposite insight into the way in which the Cambodian royal family disregarded notions that interracial marriage was a reduction of royal reverence and authority or could impair national politics.

Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath and Prince Chula Chakrabongse

Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath was the forty-first child of King Chulalongkorn and the fourth child of Queen Sri Bajarindra. Born in 1883, he rose to become one of Chulalongkorn’s favorite children and second in line to the throne after Crown Prince Vajiravudh. His childhood coincided with the modernization of Siam and the vulnerable position of the kingdom in the game of power politics. Accordingly, Chulalongkorn crafted an amicable foreign policy based on the diplomacy of appeasement vis-à-vis colonial powers. Caught between Britain and France, Siam under Chulalongkorn was desperate to diversify its foreign policy options by befriending other European powers to alleviate the tension of being a buffer state. When the Russian Tsarevich visited Bangkok in March 1890, Chulalongkorn grasped at the opportunity to forge ties with the Russian Empire. In return, when Chulalongkorn paid a visit to Russia during July 1–11, 1897, Tsarevich, who by then had become Tsar Nicholas II, rolled out the red carpet to welcome him with full honors. Tsar Nicholas II, in demonstrating his friendship, offered a scholarship to one of Chulalongkorn’s children to study in Russia under his auspices. Chakrabongse was chosen to represent Siam at the Russian court, emphasizing the kingdom’s strategy of constructing a royal connection to achieve Russia’s respect for Siam’s suzerainty. Chakrabongse had earlier arrived in England for his English training. But in 1898, he relocated to St. Petersburg and enrolled at a military academy at the wish of Tsar Nicholas II.

While in Russia, he fell in love with a local girl, Ekaterina Ivanovna Desnitsky, also known by Katya for short. A 17-year-old orphan from Kiev, Katya was a volunteer nursing student at a hospital in St. Petersburg.Footnote 1 Torn between his royal obligation as a son of the king of Siam and his own choice of spouse, Chakrabongse decided to marry Katya, and even became baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, without the permission of King Chulalongkorn. Upon returning to Siam, Chakrabongse left his newly wedded wife in Singapore while trying to figure out how to break the news of the wedding to his parents. But rumor spread like wild fire in Bangkok about the young prince’s marriage, a serious taboo in the royal court. Chulalongkorn finally confronted his son and asked, “They said you have a mam (Western woman) wife, is it true?” Chakrabongse replied, “Probably.”Footnote 2 The incident henceforth chilled the relationship between the two men until the death of Chulalongkorn in 1910. Chakrabongse never apologized to his father but stood firm in his decision. Asked by Chulalongkorn what royal title Chakrabongse expected his son to be rewarded with, since he himself was son of the king and second heir to the throne, he answered, “Anything, my son could be just a mister.”Footnote 3 Queen Sri Bajarindra was at first furious for being kept in the dark, but was inclined to reconcile with her son and his wife, particularly after their baby boy, Chula Chakrabongse, was born in 1908. Not until Chula Chakrabongse reached the age of two was he granted an audience with his grandfather, King Chulalongkorn. Chulalongkorn told his wife, “Today, I met your nephew. He is cute and resembles his father. I fell in love with him at first sight since he carries my blood.” And with relief, he said, “It looks like he does not have farang roots in him.”Footnote 4

Meanwhile, Katya , in her letter to Ivan, her brother, described the undignified status of women in the royal court. She wrote, “Siamese women were not permitted to study. They were told to simply accept men’s higher status. Polygyny, regarded a repellent practice elsewhere, was normal in Siamese society. Mistresses were treated as servants, having to prostrate in front of their husband and stifling any opinion of their own.”Footnote 5 Acknowledging these otherwise absurd royal protocols, Katya however strove to prove that she could fit into Thai society. She started to wear Siamese costumes, learn Thai, and become acquainted with the rigid formalities that she had considered outdated in the first place. The bitter fact that Chakrabongse entered into matrimony with a Westerner practically served as an unlikely hurdle for him to be enthroned should the Crown Prince, Vajiravudh, for any reasons, fail to perform his duty as heir apparent. And with the Succession Law being put in place during the Vajiravudh reign, it further reiterated that both Chakrabongse and his half-Thai, half-Russian son, Chula Chakrabongse, were virtually excluded from the succession. Analytically, the exclusion of the Chakrabongse family from the succession could be explained in two ways. First, owing to the power politics in which Siam had engaged itself with colonial nations, having a European wife and a half-European child could be considered as politically disadvantageous and jeopardizing the kingdom’s interests. Chulalongkorn might have feared that Chakrabongse could be turned into an instrument of Russia, and this could dictate Siam’s fate and shift the balance of power, which the king desperately wanted to maintain. Second, any association with farangness could have provided grounds for disqualification in the power competition inside the palace. Since Chakrabongse married a Russian, his loyalty to the kingdom of Siam was supposedly in doubt.

The relationship between the Chakrabongse family and the palace improved following the birth of Prince Chula Chakrabongse. Still, the first grandson of the king, Chula Chakrabongse, could not escape the taboo of having half-farangness embedded in his identity, which partly constrained his ties with the palace. Constantly, he needed to emphasize his Thai identity to overcome the predicament of being the “otherness” in the royal court. He once said, “Despite being a half-farang, the Thai blood in me is so intense that I can wholeheartedly feel my Thainess.”Footnote 6 As a successful writer and historian, Chula Chakrabongse conveyed through the pages of his books the issue of being a foreigner in his own country and the suspicion that accompanied it. In Kerd Wang Parusk [Born in Paruskavan Palace], Chula Chakrabongse made public a letter from King Prajadhipok addressed to him dated June 26, 1929, which directly showed the latter’s disdain for his nephew’s farang origin:

You ask me whether you will be allowed to have any responsible part when you return. Of course, you will. What I meant was that you must not think of occupying the throne. I doubt what are your ambitions, but I only wish to warn you about one ambition that you will have to put away forever for you and yours…. You may possibly imagine that you are not my favorite nephew like some others because you happen to have foreign blood in you.Footnote 7

In the same letter, Prajadhipok also stressed, “I regretted the fact that your father married a foreigner.”Footnote 8 It was considered a disaster of the dynasty.Footnote 9 This attitude reaffirms the royal family’s necessity to maintain the restriction on intermarriage with Westerners. After 13 years together, in 1919, as love faded, Chakrabongse divorced Katya . Expensive jewelries previously given to the farang daughter-in-law by the Queen were recalled.Footnote 10 Shortly thereafter, Katya left Siam for China where she subsequently became engaged to an American. Meanwhile, Chakrabongse was planning to marry Princess Chavalit Opas Rabibadhana, but the relationship was short-lived. In 1920, Chakrabongse died while on holiday with Chula Chakrabongse and Chavalit in Singapore. Chula Chakrabongse was afterwards put under the care of Queen Sri Bajarindra and his uncle, King Vajiravudh, who sent him to a boarding school in England. After Vajiravudh died in 1925, Chakrabongse had to report to King Prajadhipok . Had Chula Chakrabongse not had a foreign mother, he could have succeeded the throne as a son of the second heir apparent. Instead, the youngest brother from the Queen Sri Bajarindra family, Prajadhipok , was crowned. The succession was further complicated by the racial issue, and effectively shaped an awkward relationship between Prajadhipok and Chula Chakrabongse, as is evident in the former’s letter to the latter above. Prajadhipok warned Chula Chakrabongse repeatedly not to follow in his father’s footsteps of marrying a farang .Footnote 11 Quite possibly, the potential competition for power inside the palace might have driven Prajadhipok to view his nephew with great mistrust. He wrote to his nephew again in a letter dated February 11, 1931, “I must admit my fear that you could prove to be an impediment, particularly if you had an ambition for the throne. You could bring instability to the monarchy. Rumors were swirling around that I would appoint you to be my successor. I hope you would not let your desire destroy the nation and the royal family.”Footnote 12

But fate once again played the fool with the Chakrabongse family. While in England, Chula Chakrabongse fell in love and finally married a London girl named Elizabeth Hunter, in 1938. He confessed that he never thought of marrying a farang lady. Since his childhood, learning how the royal court rejected his Russian mother, Chula Chakrabongse was determined to wed a Thai woman to avoid going through the same experience. Even with Elizabeth, whom he called fondly as “Lisba,” he had tried to run away from her for almost a year. Chula Chakrabongse had since continued to justify his marriage with Lisba to satisfy other members of the royal family. He said that having a farang wife did not necessarily make him any less Thai because Lisba enjoyed engaging in discussions about Thai religion and art—something that reminded him of his motherland.Footnote 13 At the same time, he had never planned to have a child—who would be half-English, a quarter Russian and just a quarter Thai—because of the difficulties his child would have had to encounter as a member of the royal family.Footnote 14 Inadvertently perhaps, after 18 years of marriage, Lisba gave birth to a daughter, M.R. Narisa Chakrabongse, in 1956. In her adulthood, Narisa discovered the bitter past submerged in the mindset of her father, Chula Chakrabongse. She herself was born amid a racial conflict in the royal court; it isolated her and made her feel insecure. She wrote, “As the only white girl, I felt like a nightmare. When I was young, what I wanted were, first having black hair, and second not being a royalty.”Footnote 15

Somsak writes succinctly about the question of Chula Chakrabongse’s eligibility to succeed to the throne. He disagrees with an argument put forward by supporters of Pridi Banomyong that Prince Chula Chakrabongse could have still been heir to the throne despite his foreign mother. They argued that, among many reasons, the Palace Law of Succession was enacted after the prince was born. Somsak suggests that Chula Chakrabongse became ineligible because, firstly, his father, Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, promised King Vajiravudh not to nominate his son as heir apparent in the event that he himself became king (in exchange for King Vajiravudh nominating Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath as his legal successor). Secondly, after the death of Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, King Vajiravudh nominated Prince Asdang as his heir apparent, bypassing Prince Chula Chakrabongse. And thirdly, in his will from his sickbed, King Vajiravudh nominated Prince Prajadhipok as the next king, once again sidestepping Chula Chakrabongse. By this time, the Palace Law on Succession had already been enacted. Of course, it was possible for the Khana Ratsadon to replace Ananda with Chula Chakrabongse and contest the Palace Law on Succession. But the circumstances surrounding the royal succession seemed to favor Ananda more than Chula Chakrabongse. For one thing, Ananda was the legal heir to the throne. Furthermore, as a minor, he could not possibly interfere in politics. The fact that his mother was a commoner and he himself was raised in Switzerland, away from the royal politics in Bangkok, supported the decision of the Khana Ratsadon to endorse his enthronement.Footnote 16

In November 2013, in the London district of Notting Hill, I had a chance to interview M.R. Narisa Chakrabongse, who kindly requested that I call her Pee Sa.Footnote 17 In talking about being a farang in the Thai royal family, Narisa had the impression that all Asians were racist. Racism, to her, was not uniquely Thai. She opined that royalty marrying a commoner could be a taboo, let alone marrying a Westerner. In all historical books about the Chakrabongse family, the issue of “otherness” in one’s own society has been recurrently highlighted. In the case of her grandfather, Prince Chakrabongse, Narisa argued that his wedlock with Katya fell into the trap of great power politics. Originally wanting to reach out to the Russians, King Chulalongkorn was however wary about the danger of getting too close to Russia at the same time, which could not only upset the balance of power in this region but could also threaten Siam’s interests because of the uncertainty facing the Russian monarchy at the early twentieth century. “Racism may have stemmed from fear,” Narisa told me. Siam was in great danger, from colonialism until the First World War, haunted by fear of losing sovereignty. The fact that Siam lost its occupation over certain provinces in Cambodia and Malaya further intensified the level of mistrust against farang . Thainess was the ultimate quality that fuels the flame of nationalism.

Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya

The case above can be further elaborated with regard to the example of Princess Ubolratana. Born on April 2, 1951, in Lausanne, the arrival of Ubolratana was a slight disappointment for the royal couple and indeed for the country that had been waiting for a true heir born of a king in 40 years.Footnote 18 Gender thus came into play in regard to the royal succession. If only the palace would allow a female heir to the throne, Ubolratana would be made a primary successor. Handley described Ubolratana as being the king’s favorite child. “Attractive, outgoing and capable in school and sports, she was everything the prince was not,” Handley remarked.Footnote 19 Ubolratana was different from other royal children. A rebel, as many would characterize her, Ubolratana found the palace life too confining. Since her birth, she was fed into the process of a perfect family construction. She was instructed to use royal language and behave properly in front of the king, thus constraining her from enjoying relaxation with her own father. Raised inside the insular world of royalty, Ubolratana was a frustrated young girl who was not permitted to go out on dates when she was at an age when her mother Sirikit had already fallen in love with her father.Footnote 20 Her suffocation also stemmed from the clashes between the traditional beliefs of Thailand and new concepts of the modern world. Ubolratana once asked her father, “Why couldn’t Thai students openly question their government’s actions, unlike American students in their anti-war protests?” Bhumibol replied, “Siam was unique and governed by an old-age passion for order and harmony.”Footnote 21 Later Ubolratana told William Stevenson, the author of The Revolutionary King:

For me, America still meant freedom. I was stifled. Royals live with so many restrictions from early childhood. It’s unnatural for children, keeping a lid on their own personality. And I could never answer the things that were invented by courtiers or whispered against me—that I was a drug addict, a sex fiend with lots of boy friends…. They seemed to have all the right to say whatever came into their heads, yet I had no right to respond, no right to be angry.Footnote 22

Eventually, King Bhumibol gave a green light to Ubolratana’s request to be educated in the United States. She enrolled in a private school in New England for her tertiary education. She then went on to study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. While at MIT, she met a handsome classmate, a young blond American, Peter Ladd Jensen. The story of their romance reached the ears of Bhumibol and Sirikit, who immediately attempted to block the relationship, in a way possibly similar to what had happened with Ananda and Marileine many decades before. But Ubolratana’s stubbornness was responsible for her decision to marry her American sweetheart in 1972. She also adopted a new farang name, Julie, after sultry American singer Julie London. The decision broke the heart of King Bhumibol, similarly to how Chulalongkorn may have felt about his son marrying a Russian. It, however, also threatened the carefully crafted image of the royal family, by then based on the need to promote the Thai family value. Out of anger and because she married a commoner farang , Bhumibol stripped Ubolratana of her royal titles and privileges; hence, her children would not be royal. She was totally disqualified from the royal succession, on the basis of interracial marriage. After her marriage with Jensen, she did not return to Thailand for eight years. As Mrs. Julie Jensen, she became an American resident of California. This amounted to a long estrangement, during which time the Thai media never mentioned her name.Footnote 23

Not until August 1980 did Ubolratana, three months pregnant, reconcile with her family in Bangkok and she later gave birth to her first half-Thai, half-American child. Aside from reconciliation, Ubolratana hoped that her royal titles would be reinstated. Although her mother seemed to have forgiven her, there was no change in her status. Her official title remained Thanpuying , or Lady, a non-royal rank. The fact that Narisa can be a Mom Rajawongse but not Ubolratana says much about the latter’s position in the Thai royal family. Feeling dismayed, Ubolratana and her husband rushed back to California following only 4 days in Thailand. After she gave birth to Ploypailin, in 1981, she visited Thailand more frequently, again attempting to ride on the popular backing from royal elites to have her royal titles restored. Among them was Queen Sirikit who endorsed the reinstatement of Ubolratana’s royal titles. But this movement was consistently blocked by Bhumibol who clearly did not want Ubolratana to have a role in the palace and royal family affairs.Footnote 24 In 1983, Ubolratana gave birth to Bhumi, the second and only boy in the Jensen family (who was autistic and died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami). Two years later, her youngest daughter was born, and named Sirikitiya. Raising three children on her own in Southern California at first appeared to be a dream job for Ubolratana. But as her children grew older, Ubolratana realized that the much sought-after American life was no longer fulfilling, and she increasingly craved the glamorous lifestyle enjoyed by her royal siblings and more than ever yearned for the reinstatement of her titles. In 1998, she divorced Peter Jensen and moved back to Thailand with Ploypailin and Bhumi who eventually received Thai citizenship. Meanwhile, Sirikitiya remained with her father in San Diego.

Starting in 1998, Ubolratana burst onto the high-life scene of Bangkok society. Her title is currently Tunkramom Ying, a courtesy-style appellation of the daughter of Sovereign with the Queen. She often appears on the front cover of fashion magazines, sometimes dressing somewhat provocatively and visibly unlike what is generally expected of royalty. She transformed herself into a minor movie and pop star. She has, in the meantime, engaged in a number of philanthropic works, such as her own initiative, the “To Be Number One” project, designed to tackle narcotics problems. Often she visits remote regions to promote her charity work wearing outrageously flamboyant clothing. Despite having no royal titles, Ubolratana has continued to be treated like a princess. Her children, too, have received royal treatment. Today, Ubolratana communicates with her fans through her Instagram feed. The exploitation of social media in her case may bring forth some implications for the royal family. Positively, her constant engagements with the Thai public have narrowed the gap between the monarchy and the people. In other words, she may have helped normalize a godly image of the monarchy, which some Thais see as a courageous move on the part of Ubolratana in adopting herself for the modern social environment. Critically, the constant exposure of Ubolratana on social media, for some in the palace, might jeopardize the royal family’s lifetime mission in building up a high level of reverence for the monarchy. But for now, nothing seems to be able to stop Ubolratana’s infatuation with showbiz life and inculcating her popular image.

In February 2019, Ubolratana reinvented herself as a politician. She confirmed her candidacy of the post of prime minister nominated by the emergent party, Thai Raksa Chart (TRC). TRC was a splinter of the bigger, more powerful Pheu Thai Party of the deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Her candidacy arrived more than a month prior to the general election that would be held on March 24 the same year. Ubolratana claimed that she had already stepped aside from being a member of the royal family and exercised her rights and freedoms under the constitution as an ordinary person as she decided to represent the TRC as its candidate for prime minister.Footnote 25 The public’s response was mixed. Those supporting her party, mainly diehard fans of Thaksin, cheered the nomination. For Thaksin enemies, they fiercely criticized Ubolratana’s intervention in politics. Eventually, King Vajiralongkorn ended the debate over the appropriateness of the princess’s political role by issuing a royal statement condemning both Ubolratana and Thaksin for “dragging the monarchy into the political fray.” “Bringing such a high-ranking royal family member into the political system, no matter in which way, is an act against the royal custom, tradition, and the culture of the nation,” read the king’s statement, which was broadcast on television. “It is considered an extremely inappropriate action,” it added.Footnote 26

Other less prominent cases, such as the marriages of Princess Galyani Vadhana and Princess Chulabhorn Walailak, sister and daughter of King Bhumibol, respectively, to men of lower statuses, might enlighten the issue of royal matrimony. Princess Galyani married Colonel Aram Rattanakul Serireongrit in 1944. Aram was the son of a former Payap [Northwestern] Army commander-in-chief General Luang Serireongrit, formerly Charoon Rattanakul Serireongrit. Because she married a commoner, she renounced her royal status. Only after Bhumibol ascended to the throne was Galyani reinstated with her princess title. She had one daughter with Aram, Dhasanawalaya Rattanakul Serireongrit, who was not adorned with a royal title due to her mother’s marriage to a non-royal. Galyani divorced her husband in 1949.Footnote 27 She married again in 1969 with Prince Varananda Dhavaj, son of Prince Chudadhuj Dharadilok, who was the son of King Chulalongkorn. They had no children. As for Princess Chulabhorn, she married Royal Thai Air Force Vice Marshal Virayudh Tishyasarin, a non-royal, in 1982. Though her husband was not given royal status, the Princess was exempted from having to resign her royal birthright and their two daughters (who are direct granddaughters of the king) Princess Siribhachudabhorn and Princess Aditayadornkitikhun were granted the royal title of HRH. To a certain degree, Chulabhorn followed in the footstep of her aunt, Galyani, by marrying a commoner of her own choice.Footnote 28 The king’s different decisions with regard to Chulabhorn and Ubolratana underline the fact that the most significant factor leading to the latter’s loss of royal title was the marriage to a foreigner, not a commoner. Chulabhorn divorced her husband in 1996.

King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia

In terms of cultural similarities, Thailand and Cambodia could have been called “twins” of Southeast Asia. Thailand imitated a myriad of practices, customs, and protocols from the old Khmer Empire, while adapting them to suit its own political and social condition. The Thai royal court had taken Khmer royal language, costumes, and architecture into its own possession over the centuries. Amidst similarities, there are also many differences in particular in regard to colonial experience and geopolitics, as reflected in their different views on interracial marriage. In the modern history of Cambodia, King Norodom Sihanouk emerged as the most significant monarch of the nation, living through the colonial period, the American intervention, the Khmer Rouge regime, and the Vietnamese occupation. He reinvented himself over and over, from serving as a constitutional monarch, prime minister, president to exiled leader, as Roger Kershaw termed him, “the king with nine lives.”Footnote 29 Sihanouk ascended the throne in April 1941 following the death of his grandfather, King Sisowath Monivong. At the time, Cambodia was still colonized by France and was a part of French Indochina. The Japanese army helped emancipate Cambodia from its colonial masters, but it was taken over once again by France at the end of the Second World War. King Sihanouk, in his struggle against the French, sought refuge in Thailand, at least until Cambodia was finally granted independence in 1953.Footnote 30

William Branigin asserted that Sihanouk took at least seven wives or consorts and fathered at least 14 children by five of them, according to the royal family tree, during the 1940s–1950s. Several of the relationships overlapped. Among the mothers of his children were two of his aunts, both princesses. During his liaisons with them, Sihanouk also married a cousin, a pattern also seen among Thai and Lao royal families. Six of his children survive. But Sihanouk’s final marriage—unofficially in 1952 and more formally in 1955—was to Paule Monique Izzi, the daughter of Pomme Penag, a Cambodian woman, and Jean-François Izzi, a French banker of Corsican, thus of French and Italian descent. According to Branigin, “She [Izzi ] first caught the royal eye at age 15, when Sihanouk awarded her a prize in a Phnom Penh beauty pageant in 1951. She eventually became his principal adviser and wielded great behind-the-scenes influence.”Footnote 31 Born in 1936 in Saigon, she was educated at Lycée Français René Descartes de Phnom Penh . After marrying King Sihanouk, she earned the title of Queen Norodom Monineath Sihanouk, or commonly known as Queen Monique. She was the mother of two children: Norodom Sihamoni, born in 1953 and currently King of Cambodia, and Norodom Narindrapong, born in 1954 and who died of a heart attack in 2003 in Paris.

Marrying a half-Khmer, half-European did not disqualify King Sihanouk from the throne. There was also no popular opposition to his marriage to Monineath . But their matrimony in the early years was not without controversy, particularly concerning the ethnic background of his bride and her non-royal roots. Trudy Jacobsen argues that elite women were active participants in political and social life of middle Cambodia, deciding matters of succession, acting as diplomats and confidantes, and orchestrating policy.Footnote 32 This has remained a common practice for women within the walls of the Cambodian palace. Hence, Monineath was expected to be actively involved in the political realm, but doubt was cast on her ability as a half-Khmer. Overtime, however, Queen Monineath proved her determination to play a necessary part in the palace. She helped strengthen the position of the monarchy through tumultuous times, as observed by Jacobsen, by giving advice to King Sihanouk and serving as a go-between the palace and the government. Jacobsen wrote:

The importance of Queen Monineath (Monique) has also gone unnoticed by most observers, yet she was present at almost all of the reconciliation meetings. She was not always successful in preventing Prince Sihanouk from perpetrating a diplomatic debacle, however. As delegates to the month-long international conference on Cambodia, held in Paris last August [1989], stared at the speaker [who had just announced “I support genocide!”], his wife vainly tried to restrain him. “Don’t breathe a word,” he hissed at her. Staff witnessed letters, telephone calls, and meetings between the Queen and members of political factions before the first recorded meetings between the latter and the king.Footnote 33

In fact, in 2003, there was a rumor of King Sihanouk being in consultation with the Hun Sen government to amend the Constitution to allow his popular wife, Queen Monineath, to rule as regent or to convene the Throne Council to nominate a successor.Footnote 34 But Article 14 of the Cambodian constitution only permits descendants of King Ang Duong, or King Norodom, or King Sisowath, to be eligible for the accession to the Throne. Monineath was thus excluded from the succession. The Cambodian media jumped in to call for her to reign should King Sihanouk decide to abdicate.Footnote 35 Today, Article 14 has still not been amended. Unlike the Thai case, the specific political context of Cambodia served as a key factor that molded the perception of the monarchy vis-à-vis matrimony with Westerners. As argued by Charnvit Kasetsiri, sandwiched by permanent enemies—Thailand and Vietnam—the Norodom clan, during the colonial period, was forced to seek an alliance with France.Footnote 36 This viewpoint was shared by Chheang Vannarith who averred that Cambodia’s perception of French colonialism was less of an animosity towards France than a survival tactic for itself in the face of the two larger neighboring countries.Footnote 37 In my interview with a member of Cambodia’s royal family, he stated, “The French did some good things. Therefore there was no sense of resentment regarding Cambodia being colonized.”Footnote 38 Meanwhile, it was in France’s interest to preserve the Cambodian monarchy as an instrument of power. Supporting this argument were the works of two leading academics. While David Chandler argued that the French froze Cambodia’s institutions, including the potentially absolute monarchy, in place for this reason, Milton Osborne asserted that the French colonial control had ensured the survival of the royal family and confirmed the importance of the great official families.Footnote 39 Today, King Sihamoni speaks French, rather than Khmer, in the palace, and hires two French advisors to aid his administrative works.Footnote 40 It obviously reflects Cambodia’s different attitude about the royal identity and the institution’s survival in comparison with that of the Thai monarchy.

But the Thai royal family was not alone in prohibiting intermarriage with Westerners. The case of the marriage of Chao Sisouk na Champassak of Laos to his first wife, a French lady named Christiane Guida, caused an uproar in Lao royal circles in Champassak. Sisouk was the Minister of Defense and also the Minister of Finance in Laos before 1975. His marriage to Christiane was very upsetting to the Champassak royal family in southern Laos in the 1960s. His family did not approve of him marrying a foreigner. Subsequently, the couple divorced and Sisouk married a Luang Phrabang royal, apparently at least partially to shore up his relationship with Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister of Laos at the time and a member of Luang Phrabang royal family. Clearly, the idea of interracial matrimony between the two French colonies—Laos and Cambodia—was rather different.Footnote 41

A member of Cambodian royal family informed me that in his country, the people have regarded their kings as deities. This divine image, in turn, legitimized decisions made by the kings and accepted by the people. As a result, there has been no taboo in the royal court of Cambodia. He emphasized that King Sihanouk was much loved and respected by Cambodians who endorsed his decisions on domestic policy as well as his personal choices. Hence, as Sihanouk chose to marry a half-farang commoner, the nation lent its support to his choice of bride. This member of Cambodia’s royal family went on to elaborate the success in avoiding any controversy surrounding Cambodia’s interracial marriages in the palace. In his own words, he said, “We need to use petite histoire to explain grande histoire. If wedding a commoner would lead to the loss of royal titles, why would not we change that rule? And this was why King Sihanouk amended the royal protocol on interracial marriage.” He also added, “This approach has a constructive side effect. It allows the king to be closer to his people, or le petit peuple, which is very different from the Thai approach that maintains a distance between the monarchy and its subjects.”Footnote 42 Cambodia had borrowed Siam’s Kot Monthienban, or Palace Law, which prescribes the succession and royal marriage, but was updated to reflect the king’s wishes. King Sihanouk was certainly liberal in his outlook of marriage. In February 2004, he issued a proclamation stating that since Cambodia is a liberal democracy, it ought to allow gay marriage. He said that he had respect for homosexual and lesbians and that they were as they were because God loved a wide range of tastes.”Footnote 43 From this perspective, the Cambodian royal family seemed to be less conservative than its Thai counterpart.