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The French picked Sihanouk over his seemingly tougher uncles, who were actually in line for the succession, because they thought that the boy would be more pliable. For the first few years, it looked as though they had been right. Sihanouk became an inveterate sampot-chaser, thereby entangling himself in a web of domestic complexities. Royal records are kept secret, but he has apparently been married six times, sired 14 children. His current favorite and constant companion: Monique, the lovely half-Italian, half-Cambodian beauty-contest winner whom Sihanouk met when he awarded her a pageant prize in 1951.* Five of his sons are studying abroad: two in France, one in Prague, one in Moscow, and one in Peking. The Prince, true to his neutralism, says he is ready to send one child to school in the U.S., but only a daughter. "For boys I prefer the Communist camp, because education there is severe."
The Prince dabbled in almost all the arts, composed popular songs; one of them, entitled Fleur de Vientiane, is still tops on the Cambodian hit parade.
He also wrote martial numbers and at least one symphony. Setting up his own studio in the palace, Sihanouk began producing motion pictures (for charity) starring himself, with a supporting cast of Cambodian civil servants. With characteristic impartiality, Sihanouk played both a detective and a villain.
He took to painting Cambodian landscapes—significantly, he has since done a picture of Mao Tse-tung's birthplace. He acquired a taste for fast sports cars and blooded horses, on which he became an excellent jumper. More recently, Sihanouk has fielded his own palace soccer, basketball and volleyball teams and led them against various other teams.
The Transformation. With typical forthrightness, he once told his subjects in a radio broadcast: "It is true that from 1941 to 1952 when I was King, still young and handsome, certain pretty specimens of the feeble sex liked my company, and it came about that I sinned."" But then Sihanouk turned suddenly to the role of a serious politician.
He maintains that he was transformed by the death of his last child, a five-year-old daughter, in 1952—which he looked upon as a supernatural sign of punishment. To that point, Sihanouk had done little more toward independence than replace Paris' protectorate with "autonomous" membership within the French Union.
Now he threw himself into a fight for total freedom. First, Sihanouk took the field as a general and helped lead Cambodian troops against the Viet Minh Communist guerrillas from North Viet Nam then trying to get a toe hold in Cambodia. Strapping on a Colt .45 and donning an Aussie hat, the young King commanded half a company of Cambodian troops, shared field rations, slept in a pitched tent.
In June 1953, he drove off to Bangkok, vowing never to return until Paris granted Cambodia independence. But he changed his mind and came back after a week—only to begin ominously training Cambodians to rise against their foreign rulers. A few months later the French, already losing their anti-guerrilla war in Viet Nam, gave Cambodia full freedom, and the Prince returned to Pnompenh in triumph, was christened "Père de I'lndépendance."