11 Facts About Norodom Chantaraingsey

Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey was a member of the Cambodian royal family and a Cambodian nationalist.

Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey, a grandson of Norodom of Cambodia and cousin of King Norodom Suramarit, was born in 1926 in Phnom Penh.

Norodom Chantaraingsey began his military career during World War II and the Japanese occupation of Cambodia, serving in the Japanese-sponsored anti-French forces under Son Ngoc Thanh.

The communists had at one point considered making Norodom Chantaraingsey their preferred candidate as king instead of Sihanouk, but he proved too wary of the Vietnamese influence on the communist cadres.

However, after being discovered to be conspiring, along with other former members of the Issarak, to stage a coup against Sihanouk, Norodom Chantaraingsey was stripped of his military rank and royal title.

Norodom Chantaraingsey became military governor of the Kampong Speu province, and perhaps FANK's most effective commander during the subsequent civil war.

Later in 1973, Der Spiegel was to report that Norodom Chantaraingsey, using pseudo-Maoist slogans, was employing his soldiers to build roads and irrigation canals for local farmers, and in return received a proportion of their produce.

Well into 1976 rumours persisted, from refugees fleeing Cambodia, that troops under Norodom Chantaraingsey were resisting in the Cardamoms.

The exact date of Norodom Chantaraingsey's death is still unknown; one report states he was killed later in 1975 near Battambang during a failed attempt to rescue his wife, who was being held by members of the Khmer Rouge, while other reports suggest he was killed while fighting from an APC in the Damrei Mountains in 1976.

In 1973, the poet and journalist James Fenton was invited by Norodom Chantaraingsey to a banquet lunch held on a battlefield; Fenton used the surreal experience in one of his most famous poems, Dead Soldiers, noting that Norodom Chantaraingsey's aide was a brother of Pol Pot.

Norodom Chantaraingsey was married to Sisowath Samanvoraphong, a daughter of King Sisowath Monivong.