Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha dies after more than three years in coma
Thailand's Princess Bajrakitiyabha, a prominent royal and potential successor, has died at age 47 after over three years in a coma, leaving the question of succession unresolved.
The Thai royal household announced on Friday that Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who had been in a coma since December 2022, has died. She was 47.
The princess collapsed while exercising her dogs in December 2022. Doctors attributed the collapse to a severely irregular heartbeat caused by a mycoplasma infection in her heart.
Bajrakitiyabha was the eldest of King Vajiralongkorn's seven children, born on December 7, 1978, to his first wife and cousin, Princess Soamsawali. She trained as a lawyer, earning two postgraduate degrees from Cornell University in the United States. She briefly worked at Thailand's mission to the United Nations in New York before returning to Thailand to work in the Attorney-General's offices in Bangkok and elsewhere.
From 2012 to 2014, she served as Thailand's ambassador to Austria, where she built a relationship with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). She became an advocate for penal reform, focusing particularly on vulnerable women in prison; Thailand has one of the highest numbers of female inmates in the world.
After returning to Thailand, she became the UNODC's Ambassador for the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia and continued pushing for reform of Thailand's criminal justice system, which often imposes severe sentences for minor drug possession.
In 2021, her father appointed her chief of staff in his private bodyguard unit, giving her the rank of general. The princess was also a fitness enthusiast who frequently participated in long-distance runs.
Her death leaves the succession question unanswered. King Vajiralongkorn, aged 73, has not yet named an heir. Thai custom favors a male heir, but a 1974 constitutional amendment allows a female to ascend the throne. The king has five sons, but four from his second marriage were disowned in 1996 and live in the United States with their mother. The fifth son, Dipangkorn, from his third wife, is the presumed heir, though questions have been raised about his ability to perform the monarch's role. Many Thai royalists saw Princess Bajrakitiyabha as the most promising figure to succeed her father, either as queen or as a regent to assist Prince Dipangkorn. Her death leaves the succession uncertain, and Thailand's strict lese-majeste laws forbid any public discussion of the matter.
