Bhumibol’s mother, Princess Sangwalya Chukramol, was a Thai nurse studying on a scholarship at Simmons College in Boston when she met the prince. Bhumibol had an older brother, Ananda, and a sister, Galyani Vadhana.
Bhumibol and his father were inheritors of the reformist tradition begun by King Mongkut in the 19th century and accelerated by his son King Chulalongkorn, Bhumibol’s grandfather.
Mongkut and Chulalongkorn were the king and prince in “Anna and the King of Siam,” Margaret Landon’s 1943 novel, which was based on the autobiographical writings of Anna Leonowens. The novel inspired the musical “The King and I” and its film adaptation.
Bhumibol was 2 when his father died, and his mother, to whom he was very close, took her children to Switzerland for schooling. Their family life was interrupted in 1935 when Thailand’s last absolute king, Prajadhipok, Prince Mahidol’s half brother, abdicated after a military coup. The crown passed to Prince Mahidol’s eldest son, Prince Ananda, then 10 years old.
King Ananda was barely into his 20s when, on June 9, 1946, he was found dead in his private chambers with a bullet through his head. Bhumibol was the last family member to have seen him alive, but he never spoke publicly about the death or about rumors that the young king, a gun collector, may have committed suicide or killed himself accidentally.