Maha Vajiralongkorn, who on Saturday will be crowned King of Thailand, is an amateur to have fun and fly airplanes, agitated private life, but at the same time is considered a skilled strategist who knows well the Armed Forces that control the country.
In the shadow of the palace walls, they will turn holy water on his head to grant him sovereignty, before moving to the throne room, under the nine-story white umbrella, where he himself will place "the Great Crown of Victory" of gold and diamonds and more than seven kilos of weight.
Three days before this grand ceremony, Maha Vajiralongkorn, three times divorced, was surprised to announce that he had remarried with his long-time partner, a former stewardess of Thai Airways raised to the title of Queen Suthida.
A member of his personal escort, Queen Suthida was promoted to general on the day Vajiralongkorn ascended the throne in 2016.
Maha Vajiralongkorn, 66, the only male heir of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016, has been preparing to ascend the throne since childhood.
"From the first second of my life, I'm a prince, it's hard to say what it feels like to be a fish when you're a fish, a bird when you're a bird," he told the BBC in a rare interview in 1979.
A few days before the coronation, the astrologer of the court, Chatchai Pinngern, elaborated his horoscope in the temple of the Buddha of the Emerald in Bangkok. But it will never be public because everything about the monarch is taboo.
And poor who breaks it, in this country in the crime of lese majesty is punished with years of jail.
Since his accession to the throne, Maha Vajiralongkorn has not changed his habits too much.
Rarely appears in public, unlike his father, who visited the provinces of the kingdom without respite and whose annual speeches, broadcast on television, were political events awaited and meticulously dissected.
Maha Vajiralongkorn, one of the richest monarchs in the world, spends a large part of his time in Germany, where he owns several residences and where he likes to pilot his Boeing 737.
"A way to escape the ceremonial yoke of Thailand," said Sophie Boisseau du Rocher, Thailand specialist at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
- "Intransigente" -
His repeated absences do not prevent him from being very involved in the affairs of the monarchy, which he remodeled in depth since 2016, removing several constitutional amendments that delimited his powers and ensuring direct control of the royal coffers.
"He also intervenes in politics more directly than his father," said Eugenie Merieau, a specialist in Thai politics, who described him as "intransigent."
Thus, vetoed the candidacy of his sister to the post of prime minister for a critical party with the military junta, a veiled support to the generals who run the country since 2014.
Maha Vajiralongkorn maintains privileged relations with the Armed Forces. After studying secondary school in the United Kingdom, he studied at the Duntroon Military Academy in Australia, piloting helicopters and fighter planes before being promoted to general on an honorary title.
"He is not impulsive but he can be angry, he hardly supports the questioning of his authority," he explained, under anonymity, a Thai businessman who worked for the palace.
"It is difficult to discern, and that great part of the mystery it cultivates makes it distant and sometimes disturbing," he added.
His supposed skulls have circulated widely in foreign media. The German newspaper Bild has published several of his photos in unofficial prints.
His third wife, Srirasmi, with whom he secretly married in 2001, was stripped of his royal title in 2014. Since then, several members of the family of this plebeian ended up behind bars for lese majeste crimes.
The king has seven children, but he denied four. The son of Srirasmi, Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, aged 14, now ranks first in the order of succession
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