Thailand’s Tyrant King / Telegraph Magazine

On June 4 Sitanan Satsaksit called her brother, Wanchalearm, as he bought meatballs from a food stall in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Then she heard a loud bang, screams, and her brother shouting, "I can't breathe". Onlookers say armed men bundled Wanchalearm into a black SUV, which sped away.

Wanchalearm was a human-rights activist who had fled Thailand after a military coup there in 2014. Aged 37, he was the ninth exiled Thai dissident to disappear in recent years. The bodies of two were found in the Mekong River on Thailand's border with Laos - disembowelled, bodies stuffed with concrete, their legs broken and hands shackled. Nobody expects to see Wanchalearm alive again.

Even before his abduction, there was rising popular anger at the authoritarian Thai regime, especially among the young. It had been curtailing basic democratic freedoms. The coronavirus pandemic then wrecked the country's tourist industry, causing great economic hardship. But instead of showing solidarity with his suffering people, Thailand's monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and his harem took over an entire luxury hotel in Bavaria for the duration.

Wanchalearm's seizure put match to petrol. Huge protests erupted in Bangkok, and they were not directed just at Thailand's military-backed government. Increasingly they targeted their slight, arrogant and decadent king - an unimaginable development in a country that had long regarded its monarchs as demi-gods. Under Thailand's lèse majesté laws, citizens can be jailed for up to 15 years for showing disrespect to royalty.

Six months on those protests are, if anything, gathering momentum. A bloody crackdown by the arch-royalist army looks possible, if not probable. The erstwhile tourist mecca of Thailand has become the latest flashpoint in the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and the catalyst is the widely reviled king himself.

Vajiralongkorn's father, King Bhumibol, was the world's longest reigning (and richest) monarch when he died in 2016 after 70 years on the throne. His image was burnished by state propaganda, but he was generally seen as a humble, pious man who seldom left Thailand as he strove to help his people. They revered him in return.

Vajiralongkorn, 68, is the polar opposite. He is a playboy and serial womaniser and known for his sudden and aggressive mood swings. He plunders the nation's wealth, removes opponents and seems determined to restore absolute - rather than constitutional - monarchy 88 years after it was abolished.

During long sojourns in Germany, he sports low-slung jeans and skimpy crop tops (his signature attire), revealing a torso covered in henna tattoos. He made his poodle an Air Chief Marshal. He sent greetings to Kim Jong-un on North Korea's national day. He makes courtiers - and his wives - prostrate themselves before him.

Newly crowned K.M.V, Queen Suthida and Prince and Princesses are seen at the balcony of Suddhaisavarya Prasad Hall at the Grand Palace where the King grants a public audience to receive the good wishes of the people of Bangkok, 2019 CREDIT: Reuters

"He's essentially a dictator," says Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a British journalist blacklisted by the Thai regime for writing a book, A Kingdom in Crisis, deemed insulting to the monarchy. "He has convinced himself he's a kind of god, like his father," says Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an exiled Thai scholar now teaching in Japan.

"He has always been aware he's not measured up to his parents' expectations," says Paul Handley, author of another banned book, The King Never Smiles. “But he seems incapable of reeling in his impulses - women, anger, lashing out at people, having them beaten, allegedly having them killed...Now he’s reached an age where he really doesn’t care very much.”

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Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun was born during a drought in 1952, the second child and first son of Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. "At the very same time," according to one gushing account, "the rain that had been absent throughout the season started to come down. It was as if the sky recognised his birth."

He was allegedly unable to tie his shoelaces until he was 12 because courtiers did so. He was then sent to King's Mead prep school in Sussex. Old press clippings show the king, queen and a bevy of Thai officials arriving to take him out to lunch at Eastbourne's Grand Hotel one Sunday in 1966.

He moved on to Millfield school in Somerset. A contemporary, Rupert Christiansen, later wrote an excoriating description of the young prince for this newspaper.

He was "tubby and clumsy," suffered from "one of the most violent twitches I have ever seen" and "nobody really wanted him as their friend," Christiansen recalled. He was neither clever nor sporty, and enjoyed only the Combined Cadet Force, where "he so excelled in the meticulous wearing of kit, the parade ground drills, the shouting and saluting that he was promoted to some sort of officer status".

Vajiralongkorn married his first cousin Princess Soamsawali Kitiyakara in 1977 and a year later the couple had their first child, Princess Bajrakitiyabha. After 15 years together, the couple divorced CREDIT: Getty

He became a "vile bully" who treated one poor boy with "obsessive sadism... the more he whimpered, the more [Vajiralongkorn] taunted and sneered and tormented" him. "This wasn't standard schoolboy stuff at all, but a revelation of the psychopathology of human cruelty."

From Millfield he enrolled at the Royal Military College in Canberra, Australia, then joined the Royal Thai Army, trained as a fixed-wing and helicopter pilot at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and learned to fly fighter jets in Arizona. He saw no real action, but today holds the ranks of Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Thai Air Force.

In 1977 he married his first cousin, Princess Soamsawali, at his mother's behest. The following year they had a daughter, Princess Bajrakitiyabha, but by then Vajiralongkorn had already met teenage 'actress', Yuvadhida Polpraserth, with whom he proceeded to have four sons and another daughter before they eventually married in 1994.

Two years later he accused his second wife of adultery. She fled to the UK. Her relatives were banished, and her friends imprisoned. The Crown Prince disowned his sons, stripped them of their royal titles, stopped paying their school fees at Pangbourne, Harrow and Sunningdale, and told their headmasters that henceforth they should be addressed as plain ‘Mister’ or ‘Master’. He took his daughter back to Thailand.

The sons and their mother resettled in America, where they still live - scattered between Florida, New York and Oregon. The sons said later that their mother had "lived in a state of servitude, and every time [their father] found another woman we would be forced out of the house".

In 2001 Vajiralongkorn married his third wife, Srirasmi Suwadi, a lady-in-waiting, with whom he had another son, Prince Dipangkorn. Dipangkorn, Vajiralongkorn's heir apparent, is now 15.

Vajiralongkorn was attracting attention not just for his womanising. His financial and business affairs also drew scrutiny. During an audience for Thai journalists he was obliged to deny reports that he had links to organised crime, or that he was "a chao poh [mafia-like godfather]", or "a great tycoon with billions".

In 1987 he curtailed an official visit to Japan, one of Thailand's biggest economic partners, after complaining of being treated discourteously. When Japan's prime minister visited Bangkok several years later, says Handley, Vajiralongkorn took revenge. For 20 minutes he used three F-5 fighter planes, one piloted by himself, to block the visitor's Boeing 747 as it taxied towards the reception party after landing.

The royal family's activities are mostly a closely guarded secret, but occasional leaks have offered other glimpses of Vajiralongkorn's increasingly dissolute lifestyle. There was a video in 2014 that showed Princess Srirasmi sitting next to him at an opulent birthday party, naked except for a G-string.

There was the occasion in 2012 on which Vajiralongkorn, Srirasmi and an entourage of 30 flew into Farnborough on a private Boeing 737 (Thai royals have 38 planes and helicopters at their disposal). He visited the White Lion Antiques centre in Hartley Wintney and spent £10,000 on fine bone china in four hours, 15 security guards having first ensured the centre was closed to other visitors that day.

Then, in 2010, Wikileaks published a trove of classified telegrams from the US embassy in Bangkok to Washington. In one, the outgoing ambassador, Ralph Boyce, described a gala dinner attended by Vajiralongkorn and his poodle in 2007.

"Foo Foo was present... dressed in formal evening attire complete with paw mitts, and at one stage during the band's second number, he jumped up on to the head table and began lapping from guests' water glasses... The Air Chief Marshal's antics drew the full attention of the 600-plus audience members, and remains the talk of the town." (When Foo Foo died in 2015, he received a lavish, four-day Buddhist funeral).

In other telegrams, Boyce's successor, Eric John, disclosed that since 2008 Vajiralongkorn had spent most of his time with "his leading mistress" at a villa he owns in Tutzing, a lakeside spa near Munich. When he flew back to Bangkok he stayed not with his wife, Srirasmi, but with "his second mistress".

John also wrote about Vajiralongkorn's "violent and unpredictable mood swings", and his clandestine relationship with Thaksin Shinawatra, the telecoms tycoon who served as prime minister from 2001 until he was ousted in a military coup in 2006.

While King Bhumipol was trying to control his prodigal son through budgetary restraint, Thaksin sought to ingratiate himself with the future king by giving him money. John reported how a police commander served as Thaksin's secret "bagman, delivering funds skimmed from lottery proceeds to the Crown Prince". Other cables revealed that Thaksin had bought and renovated a palace for Vajiralongkorn.

By 2010 Bhumibol was ailing in hospital. The Thai establishment was alarmed at the prospect of Vajiralongkorn succeeding him. John quoted senior courtiers suggesting that he was incapable of avoiding "embarrassing financial transactions", and his popular younger sister, Princess Sirindhorn, would make a better monarch.

Bhumipol shared their concern. "He thought his son needed to live up to his own standards of behaviour in terms of family and duty to his country," says Handley. But he declined to break with tradition by disinheriting his son in favour of Princess Sirindhorn, even after Vajiralongkorn divorced his third wife, Srirasmi, in brutal fashion in 2014. He stripped her of her titles, placed her under house arrest and imprisoned her ageing parents for allegedly exploiting their royal connections. Pictures later circulated of the Princess with a shaven head.

Bhumibol died in 2016. Vajiralongkorn was formally crowned as Rama X, 10th monarch of the 238-year-old Chakri dynasty, at a three-day, £24 million coronation in May 2019 during which he was carried through Bangkok on a gilded palanquin. The crowds, some bussed in to swell the numbers, were far smaller than those for Bhumibol's funeral.

Three days before his coronation Vajiralongkorn married his fourth wife, Suthida Tidjai, a former Thai Airlines stewardess given the rank of general. Two months after it he named Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi, a former nurse, pilot and bodyguard, as his 'royal noble consort', resurrecting a practice of royal polygamy dormant for a century.

Vajiralongkorn marked Sineenat's preferment by releasing a photograph of her at the controls of a light aircraft wearing a camouflaged sports bra. Within another three months the capricious new monarch had imprisoned Sineenat for seeking equal status to the queen, only to restore her as his official concubine in August of this year.

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Vajiralongkorn inherited a kingdom in some disarray. For 15 years there had been repeated conflicts between the military and Bangkok establishment elite on one side, and millions of rural Thais championed by the populist Thaksin on the other. Thaksin was ousted in 2006, and the king's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was also deposed as prime minister in a 2014 coup led by Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief. An election last year, which the opposition maintains was rigged, gave Prayuth a cosmetic legitimacy as prime minister.

Having accepted Thaksin's money before the 2006 coup, Vajiralongkorn subsequently abandoned him and entered a mutually beneficial alliance with the new military-backed regimes. They ensured his smooth succession. He lent them the monarchy's valuable imprimatur.

As king, Vajiralongkorn has made no pretence of remaining above politics, no effort to seek consensus or unify Thailand as his father did. He has instead sought to accumulate and consolidate his power.

He has had the assets of Thailand's Crown Property Bureau, which manages investments thought to be worth up to $40 billion, transferred to him, "so they may be administered and managed at His Majesty's discretion".

He has installed loyalists in key posts, and taken command of a 'private army' of about 5,000 elite soldiers scrupulously vetted for loyalty. He has changed the law to enable him to exercise authority while abroad.

He banned his elder sister, Princess Ubolratana, from running as a Thaksin-backed candidate for prime minister in last year's election. His government allies have meanwhile drawn up a constitution designed to maximise the military's influence and hobble opposition parties. Leading political dissidents have 'disappeared', while others have been sent to 'attitude adjustment' camps. Monuments commemorating the abolition of Thailand's absolute monarchy in 1932 have been removed. Marshall says Vijaralongkorn's Dhaweewattana Palace complex in north Bangkok now houses a prison.

The first protests began in February when a court dissolved the new, reformist Future Forward Party after it performed strongly in last year's election. They were halted by the Covid-19 lockdown, but the revelation that Vajiralongkorn was ensconced in the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, an Alpine resort, fuelled public anger.

He was joined there by an entourage of 100, including a harem of 20 female 'soldiers', with some of whom he goes out cycling. "Bike, f-k, eat. He does only those three things," an insider told the Economist magazine. And fly. By late March, German media said he was jetting around the country in his Boeing 737, often landing at airports without even disembarking, just for the hell of it. In April he reportedly flew 11,000 miles from Munich to Bangkok and back for a 20-hour visit.

Marshall believes the King ordered Wanchalearm's abduction because he was angered by Thai and German activists protesting outside his hotel. True or not, the abduction ignited a much more serious wave of protests in July. They have continued ever since, spreading across the country and attracting tens of thousands of demonstrators.

The regime has arrested the protest leaders for sedition. It has shut down online forums and censored the media. It has deployed riot police, tear gas and water cannon. It has imposed a curfew. It has co-opted university authorities. It is thought to have bussed in monarchists and government employees to stage counter-protests. In October it banned gatherings of more than four people and media reports that could 'cause panic'. The king has also returned from Germany.

But the student-led protesters - inspired by last year's pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong - have not been cowed. They are tenacious, resourceful and social-media-savvy. They have co-opted the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games as a symbol of defiance. They have adopted Do You Hear the People Sing? from Les Misérables as their anthem. They have pressured the German government to stop Vajiralongkorn conducting state affairs from its soil.

Increasingly they are demanding not just a new constitution, Prayuth's resignation as prime minister and an end to harassment, but curbs on the monarchy, too. When Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana, 33, Vajiralongkorn's second daughter, staged a fashion show in Bangkok's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the protesters had 'models' strut down a makeshift 'catwalk' outside wearing skimpy crop tops. "Open defiance and mockery of the monarchy - that's something we've never seen before in Thai history," said Marshall.

How this ends remains unclear. The monarchy still commands respect among older Thais. Neither side appears willing to compromise. Marshall fears the military may seek to crush the protests by force, but adds, "I don't know if the people will stand for it. I think it will be the end of the regime."

And not only of the regime, perhaps. The monarchy is no longer the hallowed institution it was under Bhumibol. His degenerate son has squandered its vast moral authority, and transformed it from an object of veneration to one of scorn. Deference has given way to defiance. If the regime continues to block reform, and if Vajiralongkorn continues to behave as he does, says Chachavalpongpun, the exiled Thai scholar, "it could lead to the downfall of the monarchy".