since the 1980s. The precise origins of their hatred remain murky, but it probably stems from an unacknowledged family crisis in the royal household in the mid-1980s. Bhumibol and Sirikit had grown apart, and the queen’s open infatuation with her military aide Colonel Narongdej Nanda-photidej became profoundly embarrassing for the king. Narongdej was sent away from Bangkok to the United States as a military attaché, and died suddenly in New York in May 1985 after a game of tennis, at the age of just 38. The official explanation was that he suffered a heart attack but many Thais — including Sirikit herself — suspected something more sinister. Her very public grief over the colonel’s death spiralled into a breakdown, and at the end of 1985 Bhumibol ordered her to undergo hospital treatment for what was officially called a “diagnostic curettage”. Sirikit vanished from view for months, and with public disquiet growing, Princess Chulabhorn was enlisted to calm anxiety in a televised interview in 1986 in which she declared: