Norodom Sihamoni

At the time of his birth and that of his younger brother, his mother Princess Monique who is of Khmer, French and Corsican descent, had been one of King Norodom Sihanouk's consorts after being a constant companion since the day they met in 1951, when she won first prize in a national beauty contest.

The queen was granted the title of Neak Moneang and the name of Monineath at the time of her marriage to King Norodom Sihanouk in 1952.

Furthermore, Queen Monineath is a step-granddaughter of the late Prince Norodom Duong Chakr of Cambodia, and the daughter of Pomme Peang and of her second husband, Jean-François Izzi, a Corsican banker.

Norodom Sihamoni (នរោត្តម សីហមុនី, ; born 14 May 1953) is King of Cambodia.

Sihamoni was born on Thursday 14 May 1953, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia when it was still a colonial protectorate within French Indochina.

The prince’s birth at the time was viewed as a positive omen as Cambodia gained independence from France later in that year.

His given name "Sihamoni" comprises two morphemes from his parents' given names "Sihanouk" and "Monineath".

As for "Norodom", this means Narottam in Pali and Prakrit, which translates to 'the best amongst men'.

The name has a similar meaning in Khmer as well.

Sihamoni has 14 half-brothers and half-sisters by his father; his only full sibling, a younger brother, Samdech Norodom Narindrapong, was born in 1954 and died in 2003.

The then-Prince Sihamoni first began his education in 1959, where he attended Norodom School, followed by Lycée Descartes School in Phnom Penh, developing a keen interest in the arts early on in his life.

In 1962 the young Sihamoni was sent to Prague in Czechoslovakia by his father to study abroad.

There, he completed his early education at Majakovskeho Primary School and later at Ostrovni Elementary School.

When he was in his preadolescence years, he starred in a production of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker at the prestigious Prague National Theatre, where he pursued private ballet and piano classes and was once even selected for a television rendition of Brundibár, a well-known children's opera.

He then concluded his secondary education at the National Prague Conservatory and was regarded as an able student, getting high marks.

Here, he further developed his interest in the performing arts, undertaking courses in this field and excelling at the top of his class.

Furthermore, he attained great fluency in Czech.

A movie directed by Vladimir Sís was shot about the prince in Prague in 1967, under the name The Other Little Prince (Jiný malý princ).

The prince would occasionally visit his homeland for holidays of which when he did, he involved himself in Cambodia's arts and cultural scene, including starring in a film made by his father and performing ballet.

During the 1970 coup d'état by Lon Nol that saw Sihanouk removed from power and a Khmer Republic being proclaimed, exacerbating the Cambodian Civil War, Sihamoni remained in Czechoslovakia.

Between 1971 and 1975, Sihamoni completed his higher education in classical dance and music at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, culminating with the attainment of a Master's degree for which he wrote a thesis titled The Conception and Administration of Artistic Schools in Cambodia. After graduation in 1975, he left Prague and began to study filmmaking in North Korea at the National Academy of Cinematography in Pyongyang.

The fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 led to the demise of the Khmer Republic and the creation of Democratic Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge who oversaw a brutal campaign of genocide.

In the following year of 1976, Sihamoni was forced to come back to Cambodia after having been deceived by the Khmer Rouge with a forged telegram, undersigned by King Sihanouk ordering his return.

Immediately, the ruling Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot turned against the monarchy, and put the royal family including Sihamoni, his brother Prince Norodom Narindrapong, his mother Queen Norodom Monineath, his father King Norodom Sihanouk under house arrest in the Royal Palace.

The consequent Cambodian genocide saw several members of the wider royal family killed and Sihamoni and his immediate family lived in daily fear for their lives, effectively shut off from the outside world.

Throughout their period of house arrest, the prince recounted how they were prohibited from making contact with anyone and was barred from having any staff.

The Khmer Rouge soldiers would give them food consisting of rice and fish that was limited to two times a week and they had to for the most part, cultivate their own food from the palace gardens.

With the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, which resulted in the ousting of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and the establishment of the Vietnamese installed People's Republic of Kampuchea, the family, aided by the Chinese government, was airlifted to China.

Sihamoni subsequently worked as a secretary for his father who spearheaded a resistance movement in response to the Vietnamese occupation.

In 1981 Sihamoni moved to France to teach ballet as a professor of classical dance and artistic pedagogy, a position which he held for almost two decades, at various conservatoires, including the Marius Petipa Conservatory, the Gabriel Faure Conservatory and the W.A. Mozart Conservatory.

He was also later president of the Khmer Dance Association there.

He lived in France for nearly 20 years and continued his pursuit in the arts, establishing 'Ballet Deva', an original dance troupe, in which he served as its General Manager and Artistic Director, alongside heading the Royal Khmer Cinematic Corporation.

In his line of work, he placed emphasis on giving opportunities for men to feature more prominently in traditional Khmer dance where they are often not assigned leading roles when he created "Duel", a unique ballet style inspired by the Russian ballet.

During this overseas period, for a time, he also entered into the monkhood under the auspices of Samdech Bour Kry, who would later become a supreme patriarch of Cambodia.

In the early 1990s, Cambodia's Supreme National Council, which was recognized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 668 as part of the transitional process in the country pursuant to the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, unanimously selected Prince Sihamoni in 1992 as its permanent representative to the United Nations, which he served until 1993.

He became King on 14 October 2004, a week after the abdication of his father, Norodom Sihanouk.

He is the eldest son of King Sihanouk and former Queen consort Norodom Monineath and is the fourth monarch from the royal House of Norodom.

Before his selection by a nine-member throne council as the next monarch, Sihamoni served as Cambodia's ambassador to the United Nations and UNESCO.

He was educated in Czechoslovakia and was known for his work as a cultural ambassador in Europe and as a classical ballet instructor when he was still a prince.

During his reign, Sihamoni has continued his cultural advocacy alongside supporting various philanthropic causes, while balancing his role as a constitutional monarch amid Cambodia’s political developments.