Who was the Thai princess who died after more than 3 years in a coma - and the dilemma she leaves about the future of the monarchy in the country

Princess Bajrakitiyabha at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, on October 23, 2020
REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo
Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who had been in a coma for more than three years, has died, Thailand's royal family announced. She was 47 years old.
She fainted in December 2022 while exercising with her dogs. Her doctors attributed her fainting to a severely irregular heartbeat, caused by a mycoplasma infection in the heart.
With her death, the Thai royal family lost its most charismatic member and one who could have played a key role in a still unclear succession.
Born on December 7, 1978, she was the eldest of King Vajiralongkorn's seven children with his first wife and cousin, Princess Soamsawali.
"The team The doctor provided the most intensive care possible, but his condition continued to deteriorate progressively," the palace said in a statement on Friday morning. She died the day before, at Chulalongkorn Hospital.
The princess graduated in Law with two postgraduate degrees from Cornell University, in the USA. She worked briefly at the Thai mission to the United Nations in New York, before returning to Thailand to serve in the attorney general's offices in Bangkok and other parts of the country.
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From 2012 to 2014, she was Thailand's ambassador to Austria, where she established a relationship with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
There, she spoke about the need for penal reform, with a special focus on vulnerable women who end up in prison. Thailand has one of the highest numbers of incarcerated women in the world.
Back in Thailand, she became a UNODC Ambassador for the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia and continued to advocate for reform of the country's criminal justice system, in which harsh sentences are often imposed on people convicted of relatively minor drug possession charges.
In 2021, her father appointed her chief of staff of his personal guard, granting her the rank of general.
The Princess Bajrakitiyabha was also a fitness enthusiast and often took part in long-distance running.
Princess Bajrakitiyabha in Bangkok in 2015
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Her abilities and the confidence her father appeared to have in her made her an inevitable subject of speculation about the royal succession.
King Vajiralongkorn, who is 73, has yet to name an heir. Thai custom dictates that the heir be male, but a 1974 amendment to the Constitution allows a woman to assume the throne.
The king has five sons, but four, from his second marriage, were disinherited in 1996 and have since lived with their mother in the US. His fifth son, Dipangkorn, from his third marriage, is the heir presumptive, although doubts have been raised about his ability to fulfill the role of monarch, in a country where the royal institution wields much influence.
To many Thai royalists, Princess Bajrakitiyabha seemed the most promising figure to succeed her father, either as queen or as princess regent to assist Prince Dipangkorn.
Her death leaves the question of succession in Thailand unanswered, and the severity of the country's lese majeste law prevents any public debate on the topic.
We used artificial intelligence to translate this report, originally written in English. The text was reviewed by a BBC journalist before publication. Find out more here about how the BBC is using artificial intelligence (link to English text).

Source: G1