Hate at first sight' turned to loveThe death of one king launched the reign of another.
King Bhumibol took the throne in June 1946, but returned to Switzerland to finish his studies.
In 1948 he crashed his car into a truck in Lausanne, and lost the sight of his right eye. On a trip to Paris he met his future wife Sirikit Kitiyakara, the daughter of Thailand's Ambassador in France. Although the relationship did not begin smoothly.
"It was hate at first sight on my side," she told the BBC.
"Because he said he would arrive at [4:00pm]. He arrived at 7:00pm, kept me standing there, practising curtsey and curtsey. So it was hate at first sight." But hate turned to love, and the pair married in Bangkok in April 1950, a week before King Bhumibol was crowned. Sirikit was made Queen.
It was the start too of a long love affair with the people of Thailand and beyond.
In 1960, they set off on a six-month world tour. The King and Queen were a stylish pair who loved to travel.
King Bhumibol was a jazz fan known as the "Swinging King of Siam".
In her younger years, Queen Sirikit was voted one of the world's 10 best-dressed women — she never wore the same dress twice on state occasions — according to the Australian Women's Weekly in 1962.
That year they toured Australia for 19 days, taking in every state capital, and wowing new fans, including Australia's then-prime minister Robert Menzies.
"The great pleasure, the great opportunity, for two or three days in Canberra, of having some of your own charm brushed off on us so that we might take it with us as a happy memory," he said at the time.