The Long Reign

During all his 55 years on the throne--the longest reign of any living monarch --it sometimes seemed as if King Sisavang Vong of Laos had found a way to survive history simply by ignoring it. He never openly fought for independence from the French, but instead of earning the resentment of his people, he won only greater affection. When the French urged him to take a firmer stand against the Japanese in World War II, he patiently explained: "My people do not know how to fight; they only know how to sing and make love." Later he proved equally uncooperative with the invading Japanese, and French commandos had to parachute in to rescue him. Finally, in 1953, when the Viet Minh threatened to overrun the gold-spired royal capital of Luangprabang, the King flatly refused to flee. "This is my country and my palace," he said, "and I am too old to tremble." Then he went calmly to bed.

To his people he was always Chao Sivit, the fun-loving and gentle "Lord of Life." He not only lustily defended the custom of polygamy as one of the foundations of

Laotian solidarity, he also practiced it. He had 25 wives (though only the Queen was called wife), and the number of his children was reckoned from the official 38 to a less official 100. Once, Novelist W. Somerset Maugham wrote about his royal neighbor on the Riviera: "Whenever the King is in his residence, which is a pretty villa next to mine, there always seem to be at least 70 people staying with him--all of them children."

In a sense, he stayed something of a child himself. The frequent bassi (festivals) of his capital and the boat races on the Mekong River were always irresistible, and fishermen rowing by the palace often stopped to listen to the music from the King's khen pipes. But five years ago sickness fell--first rheumatism and then a malignant tumor on the neck. Last August King Sisavang Vong finally turned his duties over to his eldest son, Crown Prince Savang Vatthana, 52. Last week 21 can non volleys thundered over Luangprabang, and the fires in the temples burned all night. At 74 the old King was dead.

A graduate of Paris' Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, once France's school for diplomats, the new King has never been the easygoing sort his father was. Something of a Puritan who lives a simple life with his one wife, he is a fervent antiCommunist, and is regarded as incorruptible. When the government recently announced that before the end of the year there would be a new constitution that would turn many of the powers of the National Assembly over to the King, everyone understood that power will go to a man who means to be a King in fact.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.