A three-part miniseries and one spin-off. Not by intention. The deeper I dug the funnier I got. I hope you guys feel the same...
Part 1
Prince Chakrapong Puwanad was born in March 1883. He was the 43rd child (sorry K.Pickel, a typo!) of King Chulalongkorn (King Rama V) and the 4th child of the Supreme Royal Consort, Queen Saowapa Pongsri. His big brother, Crown Prince Wachirawut, later had taken the throne as King Rama VI.
He was standing in the middle. Sitting on his right was the future King Rama VI. Sitting cross legged far on his left was the future King Rama VII.
Since Prince Chakrapong’s another elder brother died young so he was appointed as the heir to the throne but that was as far as he could go for he, also, died sooner than his brother, King Rama VI, and another reason that confirmed his fate was him marrying a foreign lady.
The reign of King Rama V was said to be the first that opened the door of Siam to the western lands. So, it was very popular at sending the royalties to study abroad to bring various knowledge back and help developing the country. Prince Chakrapong who was one of his father’s favorites was one of them.
In 1897, King Rama V visited Russia and accepted an invitation by Emperor Nicholas II, the last Emperor of All Russia, who was his close friend. They met first in 1890 when the Emperor, who was then Nicholas Alexandrovish, Tsesarevich (Crown Prince Nicholas) of Russia, took a royal visit to Siam and was very pleased with the very warm welcome by the King.
The invitation was to send one of the King’s sons to study in Russia under the care of the Emperor himself. His son would be treated like a close relative. The King decided to appoint Prince Chakrapong who was at the time studying in England to further his education in Russia.
Nicholas Alexandrovish, Tsesarevich of Russia with King Rama V and Crown Prince Wachirawut in Siam in 1890
In Russia in 1897
A year later at the age of around 16, the handsome Prince Chakrapong was sent to study at Imperial Corps de Pages (a military academy) in Russia.
He studied hard to master the Russian classics. With all the classes conducted in Russian, the young prince had to study the language in extra classes, as well as playing the piano, violin, balalaika, dancing, horse riding and hunting; all of which were new and challenging activities for the young Siamese Prince.
Nevertheless, in September, 1901, the Prince passed all his exams with the highest mark that set the record of the school and entered as a cornet of the Hussar regiment.
In winter uniform
During that time, he met and fell in love with a 17-year-old young lady born from a Russian commoner family in Kiev, Ekaterina (Katya) Desnitskaya. They met while she was a nurse.
After completing his training at the Military Academy, Prince Chakrapong was made a Colonel in the Hussar Regiment of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and received The Order of St. Andrew the Apostle the First-Called which was the highest order of the Russian Federation. He then headed for Constantinople where he and Katya married in secret at an Orthodox church in 1906. Prince Chakrapong’s parents knew nothing of the marriage at the time.
Not long after that, Prince Chakrapong along with his wife returned to his homeland, where he was made a General and became the closest advisor to King Rama V who after hearing the news was dead-set against his son’s marriage to a foreigner. The news of the Prince taking a non-Buddhist commoner wife was widely considered scandalous. So, it was extremely forbidden among the Siamese royalties.
However, Katya eventually gained the support of Queen Saowapa, her mother-in-law. The young foreigner willingly took the Queen’s advice and swapped her European clothes for traditional Thai garments.
The fact that Katya was pregnant also brought the two women closer together. Prince Chula Chakrapong, the son of Katya and Prince Chakrapong, was born on March, 1908.
Two years later the King accidentally saw his grandson in the royal palace. In the evening he told his wife: “I met your grandson today. He’s so nice. He resembles his father and he doesn’t look like a European at all. I loved the boy from the first moment I saw him”.
Later, King Wachirawut (King Rama VI, the first son of King Rama V) elevated his foreigner sister-in-law, Katya, to the Duchess of Phitsanulok and legalized her marriage to Prince Chakrapong.
Personally, Prince Chakrapong was wealthy in all respects. Apart from owning several businesses, he himself might possibly be an heir to inherit the throne. The future seemed bright but after seven years of marriage, his relationship with Katya became distant.
Katya’s isolation in Siam turned into a longing for her homeland but the chaos concerning with the great Revolution followed by the execution of the Romanov family in 1918, going home wasn’t an option.
While Katya took a long vacation abroad away from Siam, her husband met a young Thai Princesses, a 15-year-old named Chawalit. They became close and eventually, Princess Chawalit moved in with Prince Chakrapong.
Katya returned home to learn that the rumors she’d heard of her husband falling for his young niece were true. Prince Chakrapong wanted to make Princess Chawalit his second wife.
For the first time, the culture gap was too wide to cross. Katya could not accept her husband having a second wife officially and the Prince could not understand the western concept of a woman wanting to be the only wife.
In the end, her mother-in-law, the Queen, gave her official permission for a divorce ending thirteen years of their marriage. The family fell apart and Katya left Siam promising never to set foot on this country again.
However, less than a year later she had to come back to attend her ex-husband’s funeral.
At the age of 37, Prince Chakrapong died suddenly of pneumonia. King Rama VI vetoed the Prince’s testament which was in favor of his second wife, Princess Chawalit and divided all of the Prince's assets equally between the Princess and Katya.
When all the business was arranged, Katya moved on to Beijing to stay for a while with her brother who was serving as Chief of the Chinese Eastern Railway.
After that she headed for Shanghai where she met and married former US soldier and engineer, Harry Clinton Stone then moved with him back to America. This time, she left Siam for good.
New marriage life of Katya did not go well. She could not get along with her husband’s parents. The only happiness she could grab at that time was to come to England and meet her beloved son, Prince Chula Chakrapong who at the time had become a handsome young prince.
Finally she and her husband decided to move away to settle down in Paris where she could be closer to her son who would come to stay with her during his school breaks and also closer to her own family that had migrated from Russia since the Revolution.
Katya moved back to American once again when England joined the WWII. She died there at the age of 71.
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