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# Katya Desnitskaya, Prince Chakrabon and Paustovsky's story of a Siamese queen
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/kak-rossiiskaia-dvorianka-mogla-stat-korolevoi-siama/
- Published: 2023-02-14T10:47:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:03:29.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Books, Monarchies, Mores, People

How a Russian noblewoman might have become Queen of Siam.

*"At the skating rink I often met a friend of my sister Galya, Katyusha Vesnitskaya, a senior schoolgirl at the Fundukleyev Girls' Gymnasium. My elder brother Borya was courting Katyusha. He used to waltz with her on skates.*

*Vesnitskaya's long plaits flew out in time to the waltz. They got in her way, and, without ever ceasing to dance, she would toss them over onto her breast. She looked haughtily from beneath half-lowered lids at the admiring spectators.*

*Could I have imagined then, at the rink, that Vesnitskaya's life would prove far more unexpected than all my fancies?*

*At the Corps of Pages in Petersburg, one of the sons of the King of Siam, Chakrabon, was being educated. On his way home the prince fell ill with pneumonia on the road near Kiev. The journey was interrupted. The prince was brought to Kiev, lodged in the imperial palace and surrounded with the attentions of Kiev's doctors.*

*The prince recovered. But before continuing his journey to Siam he needed to rest and regain his strength. He lived in Kiev for two months. He was bored. Efforts were made to divert him: he was taken to balls at the Merchants' Assembly, to lotteries-allegri, to the circus and the theatres.*

*At one ball the sallow-faced Prince Chakrabon saw Vesnitskaya. She was dancing a waltz, just as she had on the rink, with her plaits tossed over her breast and her blue eyes glancing haughtily from beneath half-lowered lids. The prince was enchanted. Small, slant-eyed, with hair glossy as boot-blacking, he fell in love with Katyusha. He left for Siam, but soon returned to Kiev incognito and proposed that Katyusha become his wife. She consented.*

*Katyusha went to Siam. The King of Siam soon died of some tropical disease. After him, the first heir to the throne died of the same illness.*

*Katyusha's husband was the king's second son. He had very little hope of the Siamese throne. But after his brother's death he found himself the sole heir and unexpectedly became king. Thus the merry Kiev schoolgirl Vesnitskaya became Queen of Siam.*

*The courtiers hated the foreign queen. Her very existence violated the traditions of the Siamese court.*

*In Bangkok, at Katyusha's insistence, electric lighting was installed. This overflowed the cup of the courtiers' hatred. They resolved to poison the queen who had trampled on the ancient habits of the people. Into the queen's food they began gradually to sprinkle glass from broken electric light bulbs, ground to the finest powder. Within half a year she died of intestinal haemorrhage.*

*The king raised a monument on her grave. A tall elephant of black marble with a golden crown on its head stood, trunk sadly lowered, in thick grass that came up to its knees. Beneath that grass lay Katyusha Vesnitskaya, the young Queen of Siam.*

*Ever since, each time I found myself at a skating rink, I remembered Katyusha and the bandmaster who played the waltz 'The Irrevocable Summer'."*

In the first book of his "Story of a Life", Konstantin Paustovsky recalls, almost faithfully, one of the most touching love stories, which really did take place, in 1904.

I am glad to be able to reassure all those who fumed at the treacherous Siamese courtiers: Katya Desnitskaya was not poisoned; she lived a long life and died in 1960 in Paris. But neither did she become queen.

She and Prince Chakrabon divorced in 1919[.](https://kulturologia.ru/files/u18214/Katyadesnitskaya4.jpg?ref=theparnassian.com) Chakrabon was heir to the throne, but died of pneumonia in 1920, before his elder brother the king. Ekaterina Desnitskaya and Prince Chakrabon had a son, Chula, who married an Englishwoman; they had a daughter, Narisa. Narisa's son Hugo became a well-known composer in Thailand and is married to a Thai actress.