page_title: Ananda Mahidol
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Ananda Mahidol / Reign / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: King Ananda Mahidol of Thailand
context_page_description: Ananda Mahidol, posthumous reigning title Phra Athamaramathibodin, was the eighth monarch of Siam from the Chakri dynasty as Rama VIII. At the time he was recognised as king by the National Assembly in March 1935, he was a nine-year-old boy living in Switzerland. He returned to Thailand in December 1945, but six months later, in June 1946, he was found shot dead in his bed. Although at first thought to have been an accident, his death was ruled a murder by medical examiners, and three royal pages were later executed following very irregular trials. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have been the subject of much controversy.
context_section_description: Only after the end of World War II could Ananda Mahidol return to Thailand. He returned for a second visit in December 1945 with a degree in law. Despite his youth and inexperience, he quickly won the hearts of the Thai people, who had continued to revere the monarchy through the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. The Thai were delighted to have their king amongst them once again. One of his well-remembered activities was a highly successful visit to Bangkok's Chinatown Sampheng Lane (ซอยสำเพ็ง), which was intended to defuse the post-war tensions that lingered between Bangkok's ethnic Chinese and Thai people.
  Foreign observers, however, believed that Ananda Mahidol did not want to be king and felt his reign would not last long. Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the British commander in Southeast Asia, visited Bangkok in January 1946 and described the king as "a frightened, short-sighted boy, his sloping shoulders and thin chest behung with gorgeous diamond-studded decorations, altogether a pathetic and lonely figure". At a public function, Mountbatten wrote: "[H]is nervousness increased to such an alarming extent, that I came very close to support him in case he passed out".
caption: King Ananda Mahidol in 1946
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