The King and… Well, I Guess Just I

Or

Bangkok The Drum Slowly

Bhumibol Adulyadej, the grandson of Deborah Kerr’s dancing partner in the King and I, has died at the age of 88 after a decade of poor health. In 1927, with his father enrolled in the public health program at Harvard University, Adulyadej became the only monarch ever born in the United States. From birth, he began plotting his ascent to the throne, arranging his father’s death from kidney failure while he was less than 2 years old and beyond suspicion. He ascended to the throne at 19 when his brother either killed himself or was murdered or was shot by Adulyadej while the boys were playing with their guns. He would rule with a fairly benevolent fist as a near god for the next 70 years. Despite having limited actual authority, Adulyadej used his standing with the people – so beloved that he could thwart a coup just by inviting the embattled prime minister to tea – to keep the throne through a dozen military coups over his nearly three quarters of a century at the top. And if there were ignored massacres and crackdowns on freedom and civil liberties, they were necessarily evils to prevent a civil war while dragging his nation from backwards agrarian peasantry to a modern success of industry and commerce.