Thousands of grieving Thai royalists lined the streets of Bangkok on Sunday, saluting a procession bringing former Queen Sirikit’s body to lie in state for a year-long funeral at the capital’s Grand Palace.
Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semidivine figures and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide.
Former Queen Sirikit, the mother of the current King Vajiralongkorn and wife of the longest-reigning monarch, died on Friday at the age of 93.
Sirikit’s body was carried in a slow-moving ambulance from Chulalongkorn Hospital late on Sunday afternoon, flanked by motorbike outriders on a 10-kilometre (six-mile) procession to the Grand Palace.
Crowds of nurses clasped their hands and bowed as the convoy passed, while other spectators clutched portraits of the queen or wept as ranks of saluting police officers fell to one knee.
“I want to send her off for the last time, on her last journey, as one of her children – as a Thai who loves and respects her,” 56-year-old Boontham Kornwaen told journalists outside the hospital.
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