Thread: Memory Lane (In my own language)

Part 2

While his family was gone shattered, young Prince Chula Chakrapong remained at the royal palace. After the death of his father and the departure that never came back of his mother, the young Prince was well taken care of by his uncle, King Rama VI, who had planned the future road for him.




At the age of 13, he was sent to study in England and stayed there to learn how to stand on his own feet. His father's death had left him an amount of allowance. Plus, after his father’s widow wife, Princess Chawalit decided to remarry, the King made her legally transfer all of her legacy inherited from her former husband back to his son, Prince Chula Chakrapong. That made his wealth finally grew more significant. He, later, bought his mother a house near Paris, where he could spend his holidays.




In 1925 the last surviving son of King Rama V, Prince Prachatipok, became the King of Siam (King Rama VII) but these were troubled times with the Siamese economy dragged down by the Great Depression.




With the situation in the country deteriorating each month, King Rama VII abdicated in March 1934 after handing the First Constitution to the people of Siam in 1932. His nephew (Prince Ananta Mahidol) became King Rama VIII.






Around that time, Prince Chula Chakrapong, at the age of 24, was in England and despite all of his efforts he couldn’t return to Siam. Democracy was in full swing and new rulers were already running the country. Nobody was interested in the fate of the half-Russian half Thai Prince who had no strong supporters.

In England, he met his fellow cousin, Prince Peera. Together, they set up a garage and competed in well-known international races. Prince Chula had inherited his father’s organizational skills and his cars driven by Prince Peera won the most prestigious pan-European races.




The Prince eventually met and married a British lady born in a Gentry family named Elizabeth Hunter against his uncle, King Rama VII,’s advice “Not follow the path that your father had done”. They married in 1938.

Later in the same year, the young couple managed to visit Siam for the first time making the big headlines on every newspaper but the couple never settled down there.




Even though residing in England for the whole of his life, the Prince always carried royal tasks, taken placed in foreign lands, by the commission of the Kings of Thailand.

In 1956, Prince Chula Chakrapong’s daughter, Narisara, was born.




Narisara later married twice. Her only son with the first husband, Allen Levy, has entered the world of entertainment and is well known as an artist named “Hugo Chulachak”




Prince Chula Chakrapong died of cancer in 1963 at the age of 55.




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