Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha, the eldest daughter of King Vajiralongkorn and a long-presumed succession contender, has died aged 47 after more than three years in a coma, the Thai royal household announced on Friday, the BBC reported.
“The medical team provided the closest and most intensive care possible, but her condition continued to decline progressively,” the palace said in a statement, adding that she passed away at 19:48 local time (12:48 GMT) on Thursday at Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok.
Princess Bajrakitiyabha collapsed in December 2022 while exercising her dogs. Doctors attributed her collapse to a severely irregular heartbeat caused by a mycoplasma infection in her heart.
Born on 7 December 1978 to King Vajiralongkorn’s first wife and cousin, Princess Soamsawali, she was the eldest of his seven children. She trained as a lawyer, earning two postgraduate degrees from Cornell University in the United States, and worked briefly at Thailand’s mission to the United Nations in New York before joining the Attorney-General’s offices in Bangkok.
She served as Thailand’s ambassador to Austria from 2012 to 2014, building a working relationship with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and later becoming the UNODC’s Ambassador for the Rule of Law in South East Asia. She advocated penal reform, with a focus on women in Thailand’s prison system — one of the world’s largest by share of female inmates — and on sentencing reform for low-level drug offences. In 2021 her father appointed her a chief of staff in his private bodyguard with the rank of general, the BBC reported.
The princess’s death leaves the Thai royal succession unsettled. Thailand is a significant destination for Sri Lankan travellers and has diplomatic ties with Colombo, most recently adjusting its visa-free stay for Sri Lankan visitors from 90 to 30 days in May. King Vajiralongkorn, 73, has not named an heir. Thai custom calls for a male heir, but a 1974 constitutional amendment permits a female to take the throne. The king’s presumed heir, his son Prince Dipangkorn by his third wife, has faced public questions about his fitness for the role. Princess Bajrakitiyabha was widely viewed as the most plausible alternative, either as monarch or as regent. Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté law rules out open public discussion of the succession question.
