QUOTE
In addition to her Beauty, the dominant impression of the presence the Majesty Queen Khamphoui was her great softness, her alleviating or comforting words, the flexibility of her gestures and the harmony of her steps. One murmured that the Crown prince Sri Savang Vatthana was strongly struck by it at the time of about fifteen Princesses, most beautiful of the Kingdom, were introduced to him, during his holiday visits.
The thunderbolt, if it were, was to be of an exceptional intensity since it decided to ask its hand and to marry it before going to continue and finish its study in France. This great softness had found in the Kingdom the adequate framework to be exerted amply: the protection of the mother and the child, institute to which the queen granted her patronage. Each royal visit in the various centers was followed with much devotion and was felt with comfort.
The thunderbolt, if it were, was to be of an exceptional intensity since it decided to ask its hand and to marry it before going to continue and finish its study in France. This great softness had found in the Kingdom the adequate framework to be exerted amply: the protection of the mother and the child, institute to which the queen granted her patronage. Each royal visit in the various centers was followed with much devotion and was felt with comfort.
King & Queen in 1975
Sri Vathanna & his sons and daughters playing tennis
The Royal family with the platform, admiring the travel of the dugouts on Nam Khane.
Sri Vathanna
QUOTE
Sri Savang Vatthana had always shown a great intellectual integrity. The rigour which it itself was essential, in conjunction with Western education that he had received, had made him achieve a highly significant gesture in the abandonment of a thousand-year-old, at the same time dynastic tradition and polygamy. He did not have concubines, but did not enact a law to prohibit it. Within the last days of the Kingdom of Laos he made schools, created oil investments for the country and helped countryside children along with his wife.
The last sighting of the last King & Queen of Laos in a Communist "Re-education" camp once Pathet Lao Communist took over.
The King & Prince's last days in the Pathet Lao Communist Re-Education camps
The King had been held in a hut of internment and constrained at 70 years -, to cultivate rice fields, eight hours per day and six days per week. Both the Queen & King had been tortured. Communist Pathet Lao had a strict separation of sexes in their camps so the king & queen never seen each other after the picture. The King and his son lived horribly, barely living on a diet of rice and rat meat portions. The King's health had worsened to the point where he could no longer work. In a desperate attempt to save his father's health the Prince would give his father his rations in hopes of him surviving. This sacrifice would prove fatal for the prince as he was the first one from the royal family to die of starvation.
After seeing his son dying, King Sri Vathanna decided to renounce his own life. On May 13th, As he laid dying the king's last words were to his three servants were:
"I WILL SLEEP, I GIVE ALL MY HEART, MY BLOOD AND MY BODY ON the FERTILE GROUND AND A the BEAUTY OF LAOS, AND FOR the WELLBEING OF ALL the LAOTIAN PEOPLE" after this he took his last breath and died. After his death, the three servants quickly dug up an unmarked grave as they did with the Prince and threw his body in. They had to do so with haste because if the Pathet Lao soldiers had seen them they would kill them as well.
Queen Khamphoui's last days in the Pathet Lao Communist Re-Education camps
Although she was unable to see them one last time, the Queen knew that her son & husband had been killed through news of the surviving servants. The Communist did not force her to work because according to the Communist she had been under the influence of drugs and cigarettes that were, according to her survivng servants, used to ease the stress and pain that she had from all the tragic events that had happened. She was found dead on December 12th, 1981.
