Queen Sirikit, mother of King Vajiralongkorn of Thailand, passed away at the age of 93.
She passed away ‘peacefully’ at a hospital in Bangkok at 21:21 local time (14:21 GMT) on Friday night, according to the Royal Thai Bureau.
Sirikit added that while he has been in hospital since 2019, he has “suffered from several illnesses”, including a blood infection this month.
Queen Sirikit was married to King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand’s longest-reigning king for over 60 years, and died in 2016.
Queen Sirikit has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2012.
She met her future husband while studying music in Paris, where her father was serving as Thai ambassador to France.
The couple married on April 28, 1950, a week before King Bhumibol was crowned in Bangkok.
As a young couple in the 1960s, Queen Sirikit and King Bhumibol traveled the world, meeting US President Dwight Eisenhower, the late Queen Elizabeth II, and Elvis Presley.
During that decade, she frequently made international best-dressed lists.
In 1980, Queen Sirikit appeared in a BBC documentary about the Thai monarchy called Soul of a Nation.
“Thailand’s kings and queens have always maintained close contact with their people, and they often regard the king as the father of the nation,” she said in a rare interview.
“So we don’t have much privacy because we are the fathers and mothers of the nation.”
She was considered the country’s leading maternal figure, with her birthday being marked as Mother’s Day.
