Hteik Su Phaya Gyi

Princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi (Burmese: ထိပ်စုဘုရားကြီး; born 5 April 1923, also known as Su Su Khin or Pwar May) is a Princess of Burma and most senior member of the Royal House of Konbaung.[1] She is the daughter of Princess Myat Phaya Galay and the granddaughter of the last king of Burma Thibaw Min and Supayalat.[2][3][4][5]

Hteik Su Phaya Gyi
Princess of Burma Princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi
Princess at her home in Yangon
Born	Hteik Su Phaya Gyi 5 April 1923 Rangoon, British Burma (now Yangon)
Spouse	Maung Maung Khin ​ ​ (m. 1943; died 1984)​
House	Royal House of Konbaung
Father	Ko Ko Naing
Mother	Myat Phaya Galay
Religion	Theravada Buddhism

Upon the death of her younger brother Taw Phaya in 2019, she became the last living grandchild of King Thibaw.

Biography

Hteik Su Phaya Gyi was born on 5 April 1923 in Rangoon, British Burma, to parents Ko Ko Naing, a former monk and Princess Myat Phaya Galay, the fourth daughter of King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat.[6][7]

She attended the Catholic School in Moulmein. She was employed at the US and Australian embassies in Rangoon, and later as a private school teacher.[8]

In 1936, Hteik Su Phaya Gyi was engaged offer[9] by Crown Prince of Thailand Ananda Mahidol, the brother of Bhumibol Adulyadej. But World War II has started at that time.[9] At that time Hteik Su Phaya Gyi was figuratively known as the "Queen consort of Thailand".[10][11]

Hteik Su Phaya Gyi and her husband Maung Maung Khin

In 1943, she married to Maung Maung Khin, a descendant of the Mon royal family. He was the nephew of the Premier Ba Maw and brother of Khin Kyi, a wife of her younger brother Taw Phaya Gyi. Maung Maung Khin died at Rangoon in 1984. She has three sons and two daughters.

Documentary film

In 2017, Hteik Su Phaya Gyi and her younger brother Taw Phaya, nephew Soe Win, niece Devi Thant Sin appeared as the main characters of We Were Kings, a documentary film by Alex Bescoby and Max Jones. The film premiered in Mandalay on 4 November 2017 at the Irrawaddy Literary Festival and also screened in Thailand at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.[12] The film is about Myanmar's history, but also about the descendants of the last kings of Burma who lived unassuming lives in modern Myanmar, unrecognized and unknown.[13][14]

Family

She has three sons and two daughters:

• Win Khin. birth at Rangoon, 1945.
• Kyaw Khin. birth at Rangoon, 1948.
• Aung Khin. birth at Rangoon, 1953. Artist. He d. from a cerebral haemorrhage, October 2008.
• Cho Cho Khin. birth at Rangoon, 1943.
• Devi Khin. birth at Rangoon, 1951.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Hteik Su Phaya Gyi
2. Ko Ko Naing 1. Hteik Su Phaya Gyi 24. Tharrawaddy Min (= 28) 12. Mindon Min (= 14) 25. Chandra Mata Mahay (= 29) 6. Thibaw Min 26. Maung Mey 13. Laungshe Mibaya 3. Mayat Phaya Galay 28. Tharrawaddy Min (= 24) 14. Mindon Min (= 12) 29. Chandra Mata Mahay (= 25) 7. Supayalat 30. Sagaing Min 15. Hsinbyumashin 31. Rajendra Ratna Devi

References

1. "အလုပ်အကိုင် ခက်ခဲစွာ ရှာဖွေရပ်တည် ခဲ့ရရှာတဲ့ ကုန်းဘောင်မင်းဆက် အနွယ်တော်ရဲ့ ဘဝဖြတ်သန်းမှု". Mizzima (in Burmese). 27 January 2016.
2. Kelly Macnamara (25 November 2013). "Lost Kingdom: The forgotten Royal family". The Myanmar Times. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
3. "Lost kingdom: Myanmar's forgotten royals". The Star (Malaysia). 8 November 2013. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
4. "Understanding the old kingdom in the new Myanmar". The Myanmar Times. 25 February 2013.
5. "Planète. La princesse oubliée". Le Républicain Lorrain (in French). 1 December 2013.
6. Jared Downing (19 April 2016). "Dinner with the princess of Burma". Frontier Myanmar. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
7. Ben Dunant (2 December 2017). "Myanmar's living royals reclaim their past". The Nikkei. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
8. "Interview with Hteik Su Phar Gyi". MM Cities YouTube Channel.
9. "ထိပ်စုဘုရားကြီးနဲ့ ထိုင်းဘုရင်လောင်း". BBC (in Burmese). 26 October 2017.
10. "သီပေါမင်းအလွန် ထိုင်း မြန်မာအနွယ် တော်ဝင်မိသားစုကြား ရွှေလမ်းငွေလမ်းခရီး". Kumudra. Archived from the original on 29 September 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
11. "သီပေါနောက်က တော်ဘုရားများ". BBC News (in Burmese). 10 February 2019.
12. Jim Pollard (10 February 2018). "The right to remember Myanmar's last king". Asia Times.
13. Zuzakar Kalaung (2 November 2017). "We Were Kings: Burma's lost royal family". The Myanmar Times.
14. "Documentary About Forgotten Myanmar Royalty Premieres in Mandalay". The Irrawaddy. 6 November 2017.

External links

• Myanmar Royals through Sudha Shah’s book : The King in Exile