Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit died late Friday, October 24, 2025, at a Bangkok hospital at age 93, marking the end of an era for a royal figure who brought international glamour to Thailand’s monarchy while championing rural development and traditional crafts for more than six decades.
The Royal Household Bureau announced her death on Saturday, stating she had been battling a bloodstream infection since October 17. Despite intensive medical efforts, her condition deteriorated. She had been hospitalized at Chulalongkorn Hospital since 2019 for long-term care and had largely disappeared from public view following a stroke in 2012.
Thailand declared a one-year mourning period for members of the royal family and household.
Born Sirikit Kitiyakara on August 12, 1932, in Bangkok, she arrived in the world the same year Thailand transitioned from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Her father served as a diplomat and minor royal, eventually becoming Thailand’s ambassador to France. Growing up in privilege, she attended schools in Bangkok during World War II while the city endured Allied air raids before moving to France with her father.
While studying music and languages in Paris at 16, she met Thailand’s newly crowned King Bhumibol Adulyadej, her distant cousin. Their first encounter proved inauspicious. Sirikit later recalled in a BBC documentary: “It was hate at first sight,” noting he had arrived late to their meeting. “Then it was love.”
Their relationship blossomed after Bhumibol suffered a near-fatal car accident that cost him sight in one eye. She moved to Switzerland, where he was studying, to help care for him during his recovery. The king courted her with poetry and composed a waltz titled “I Dream of You.” They became engaged in 1949 and married in Thailand on April 28, 1950, when she was just 17. A week later, on May 5, came his formal coronation, delayed four years while he completed university studies in Switzerland. He had actually become king in 1946 after his 20-year-old brother, King Ananda Mahidol, died from a gunshot wound in circumstances that remain unclear.
The newlyweds both pledged at their coronation ceremony to reign with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the Thai people. Together, they had four children: current King Maha Vajiralongkorn (also known as Rama X), and princesses Ubolratana, Sirindhorn, and Chulabhorn.
During their early years, the Thai royals traveled extensively as goodwill ambassadors, forging personal connections with world leaders. A 1960 state visit to the United States that included a White House dinner drew effusive media coverage. Time magazine called her svelte and archfeminist, while the French daily L’Aurore described her as ravishing. During a 1960 visit to Britain, she captivated crowds alongside her husband.
Her fashion sense became legendary. She collaborated with French couturier Pierre Balmain on striking outfits made from Thai silk. By championing the preservation of traditional weaving practices, she helped revitalize Thailand’s silk industry, transforming it from a declining craft into a thriving enterprise.
By the early 1970s, the royal couple shifted focus to domestic challenges, including rural poverty, opium addiction among hill tribes, and a communist insurgency. For more than four decades, they traveled to remote villages, promoting development projects that were televised nightly on the Royal Bulletin. Rural women affectionately called her daughter. She served briefly as regent in 1956 when her husband spent two weeks in a Buddhist temple as a monk, a common Thai rite of passage.
Thousands approached her with problems ranging from marital disputes to serious illnesses, and she and her assistants took up many cases personally. Royal development projects sprouted across Thailand, several initiated and directly supervised by the queen herself. In a 1979 interview with the Associated Press, she explained that misunderstandings arose between rural people and wealthy Bangkok residents, and the royal family tried to bridge that gap by staying with villagers in remote areas.
Her birthday became Mother’s Day and a national holiday in Thailand in 1976, cementing her status as a symbol of maternal virtue. Following her husband’s death in October 2016 after 70 years on the throne, and her son’s coronation in 2019, her formal title became Queen Mother.
Though officially above politics, Sirikit occasionally waded into Thailand’s turbulent political landscape marked by military coups and unstable governments. In 1998, she used her birthday address to urge national unity behind Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, effectively killing an opposition plan for a no-confidence debate. Later, she became associated with the royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy, whose protests toppled governments linked to populist former telecoms tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra. In 2008, she attended the funeral of a PAD protester killed in police clashes, a gesture widely interpreted as royal endorsement of the anti-Thaksin movement.
Her death will be treated with reverence in Thailand, where strict lese-majesty laws prescribe potential prison sentences for insulting royals, including deceased ones. Sirikit’s deceased husband, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, remains Thailand’s longest-reigning monarch. Sirikit is survived by her son and three daughters.