Prince Chula Chakrabongse — royal; author; motor-racing manager with roots in the Russian Empire
Prince Chula Chakrabongse was born on 28 March 1908 at the Paruskavan Palace in Bangkok, the only child of Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, a son of King Chulalongkorn of Siam, and Ekaterina Desnitskaya, known in Siam as Mom Katerin. He was the first grandchild of Queen Sri Bajarindra. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through both parents' lives but rests on his mother.
Ekaterina Desnitskaya was born in Lutsk, in the Volhynia Governorate of the Russian Empire, in 1886, grew up in Kiev and trained as a nurse in St Petersburg. There, in 1905, she met Prince Chakrabongse, who had been educated at the Page Corps and held an honorary commission in the Hussars under Nicholas II. They married in Constantinople in 1906, since Russian priests would not marry her to a Buddhist, and settled in Bangkok. In 1910, when Chula's uncle Vajiravudh came to the throne without children, his father became heir, and opinion at court was divided on whether a prince with a foreign mother could succeed. His parents divorced in 1919, and his father died in 1920.
Chula was sent to England as a boy and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and spent most of his adult life in England. When his cousin Prince Birabongse, known as Bira, came to England in 1927, Chula took charge of his career. In the 1930s he founded and managed the White Mouse racing team for him, buying an ERA in 1936 with which Bira became one of the leading drivers of the voiturette class; Chula handled the team's logistics and publicity, and their partnership lasted until late 1948. During the Second World War he served in the British Home Guard.
He was also a prolific writer, author of thirteen books on history, biography and motor racing, among them Wheels at Speed (1935), an account of Bira's first racing season. In 1938 he married Elizabeth Hunter; their only child, Narisa, was born in 1956 and later published her grandmother's story as Katya and the Prince of Siam. The family kept the Chakrabongse House on the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, facing Wat Arun.
He died in Cornwall on 30 December 1963, aged fifty-five.
"Born in Bangkok in 1908; educated in England from childhood, at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge; lived mainly in England and died in Cornwall in 1963."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Lutsk, Volhynia Governorate (mother) (now Ukraine)
His mother, Ekaterina Desnitskaya, was born in Lutsk in the Russian Empire in 1886 and met his father, Prince Chakrabongse of Siam, a graduate of the Page Corps, in St Petersburg in 1905. His mixed parentage made his right to the Siamese succession a matter of debate.
Mother: Ekaterina (Kateryna) Desnitskaya, born in Lutsk in 1886, raised in Kiev and trained as a nurse in St Petersburg. Father: Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, son of King Chulalongkorn, educated at the Page Corps in St Petersburg.
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Lutsk, Volhynia Governorate (mother) (now Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.