Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit dies at 93

• Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit passed away on October 24. She was 93.

• Thailand is a constitutional monarchy with the monarch as the Head of the State.

• Sirikit’s husband, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was Thailand’s longest-reigning monarch, with 70 years on the throne since 1946. 

• Her only son, now King Maha Vajiralongkorn, also known as Rama X, succeeded Bhumibol after his death in 2016 and upon his coronation in 2019, Sirikit’s formal title became the ‘Queen Mother’.

• She had been largely absent from public life in recent years due to declining health. Her husband, King Bhumibol, died in October 2016.

• The palace said she had been hospitalised since 2019 due to several illnesses.

• A mourning period of one year has been declared for members of the royal family and household.

• The government said public offices would fly flags at half-mast for a month and asked government officials to observe mourning for one year. 

• Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul cancelled trips to the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur and the APEC summit in South Korea due to the Queen Mother’s death. 

• Sirikit Kitiyakara was born into an aristocratic family in Bangkok on August 12, 1932, the year absolute monarchy was replaced by a constitutional system. 

• Both of her parents were related to earlier kings of the current Chakri dynasty.

• She attended schools in wartime Bangkok, the target of Allied air raids, and after World War II moved with her diplomat father to France where he served as ambassador.

• At 16, she met Thailand’s newly crowned king in Paris, where she was studying music and languages. Their friendship blossomed after Bhumibol suffered a near-fatal car accident and she moved to Switzerland, where he was studying, to help care for him. 

• They married in Thailand a year later when she was 17.

• The couple had four children: current King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and princesses Ubolratana, Sirindhorn and Chulabhorn.

• For more than four decades, she frequently travelled with the king to remote Thai villages, promoting development projects for the rural poor - their activities televised nightly on the country’s Royal Bulletin.

• Sirikit’s portrait was displayed in homes, offices and public spaces across Thailand and her August 12 birthday was celebrated as Mother’s Day.