The secret dinner and a glimpse at the childhood of a tragic princess

By royal standards, the Friday night dinner was a casual affair.

Never mind that the guests were given a police escort through the streets of Bangkok, or that the aides-de-camp and “a platoon of guards” were in full uniform, or that menus were printed out to explain the plethora of Thai and Western dishes served banquet-style.

For the future king of Thailand, October 5, 1984, was a chance for a “family dinner” with two couples: then-crown prince Vajiralongkorn and the woman who would become his second wife, a one-time actor known as Yuvadhida (now Sujarinee), were joined by rising Australian diplomat Christopher Lamb and his wife.

In a cable stamped “secret” and for Australian eyes only, Lamb wrote that “the evening was relaxed and informal” and passed with “the exchange of easy talk; reminiscences and the like, interspersed with a few comments on the crown prince’s present circumstances”.

At the time, Vajiralongkorn remained married to his first wife, but his second family was an open secret and growing after a third son was born.

Lamb’s six-page report of the evening has been partly declassified and released by the National Archives of Australia, although a significant portion was redacted on the grounds it contained information that could affect international relations.

The prince had a complicated love life and was compelled by dynastic manoeuvring into marrying a cousin, but in the 1980s embarked on a quest to give his second, secret family legitimacy.

When contacted, Lamb said he remembered bonding over their shared experiences as students at The King’s School in Parramatta. They had an English teacher in common, who Lamb remembered as being strict about split infinitives, but who took a kinder approach to improving the then-crown prince’s language skills.

But Lamb’s report also reveals a sad side to the young life of Vajiralongkorn’s eldest daughter, Princess Bajrakitiyabha, whose death after a long illness was announced on Friday.

It shows she was kept apart from her younger brothers, even though they had been close as infants.

The princess had been considered most likely to wield power behind the throne of her youngest brother or become the first woman to rule the South-East Asian nation as queen, until she collapsed in December 2022. Discussion about succession in the kingdom is often curtailed by lese-majeste laws that can lead to lengthy jail terms.

Vajiralongkorn has seven children, five of them with his second wife, but his four eldest sons were sent into exile in the 1990s.

At the time of Lamb’s visit to the newly built Nonthaburi mansion in 1984, there were three young princes in the palace. The youngest, about 18 months, was already in bed by the time he arrived.

“The elder two (aged about five and three) were lively but well-mannered children, who spoke a bit of English,” Lamb wrote.

Vajiralongkorn showed Lamb a picture of his eldest daughter and son playing that had been taken “some years ago”, before they were forced to live separate lives.

“Discussing the children, it was apparent that he is deeply fond of all four of them, and would like nothing better than to find a way of getting them together,” Lamb wrote.

“I gathered, however, that Bhajara is not now allowed to see or play with her half-brother, and it is possible that she is unaware of the existence of the two younger half-brothers.”

Thailand at large was kept in the dark about the existence of Vajiralongkorn’s second family until the 1990s.

Of his parents, it was Queen Sirikit who was the most stridently opposed to the second family and even publicly rebuked him in the international press as “Don Juan”.

Behind the scenes, Sirikit was against having the children recognised as members of the royal family; Vajiralongkorn told Lamb his boys were entitled to be treated as princes.

“He said that his mother had not wished the children to be registered as his offspring, but he had done it and was proud of them,” Lamb wrote.

This fondness did not last. The marriage to Yuvadhida took place in 1994 after the couple had five children together, but in 1996 it fell apart in dramatic circumstances.

The four sons were studying in England when they were turned into exiles along with their mother; their younger sister was taken back to Thailand.

The children’s lives took very different paths. Eldest daughter Bajrakitiyabha became a diplomat and working royal alongside her younger half-sister and half-brother.

But on that evening in 1984, Vajiralongkorn was most keen for his wife to have a night that was akin to normal life.

“Towards the end of the evening the Crown Prince remarked on the fun he and his wife had had during the night, and how much they hoped it would be able to keep on happening,” Lamb wrote.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.