BANGKOK ¨C Thailand¡¯s palace website crashed Monday after it published unprecedented pictures of the king¡¯s consort in a fighter jet, wearing a crop top and dressed in combat fatigues with him and the royal poodle.
The unusually candid pictures of King Maha Vajiralongkorn¡¯s consort, 34-year-old Major-General Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi, were released along with her official biography.
A palace official said the website was being fixed because of issues due to the volume of traffic. The palace has a policy of not commenting to media.
The king named Sineenat, a former nurse as well as his bodyguard, as Royal Noble Consort on his birthday last month. It was the first such appointment in almost a century, since long before the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
Some of the pictures are in the usual royal tradition, with Sineenat wearing Thai dress and sitting at the king¡¯s feet.
But she is also pictured in the cockpit of a fighter jet and wearing a grey camouflage pattern crop-top at the controls of a light aircraft. Some pictures show Sineenat and the king holding hands, while one shows them both in green combat fatigues with the royal pet dog.
Sineenat¡¯s appointment as consort came after the king married a former flight attendant and deputy head of his personal guard force, Suthida Tidjai, 41, and made her queen just days before his coronation in May.
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