Mongkut Dok Som

“Mongkut Dok Som” is a dark period melodrama about innocence destroyed by greed, lust, rivalry, and the cruelty hidden inside a wealthy household.
Khamkaew is a delicate northern girl of about fifteen, fragile and pitiful to all who see her. Like many convent girls, she dreams of one day wearing a pure white wedding gown, soft and beautiful like a princess in a fairy tale. The flower she loves most is the orange blossom, and she has long dreamed of weaving it into a crown to wear on her wedding day.
But reality is heartbreakingly far from that dream.
After her father dies burdened by debt, and her stepmother no longer wants to raise her, Khamkaew is sent away to become the young minor wife of an old Chinese tycoon in Bangkok.
That man is Chao Sua Cheng Sue Kiang, now around sixty years old. Far from feeling ashamed, he is secretly pleased and deeply proud that, even at his age, he has managed to acquire a young and beautiful wife like Khamkaew. He eagerly awaits the moment he can possess her beauty and innocence.
Khamkaew arrives quietly at the great old red mansion by Khlong Phasi Charoen, and no one in the house even knows that the fourth wife has arrived. Chao Sua intentionally keeps her arrival a secret because he knows that taking such a young wife at his age is embarrassing. There, he assigns Kimlang, a spirited and mischievous Chinese servant girl, to become her personal maid.
Their first meeting is far from pleasant. Kimlang instantly senses that beneath Khamkaew’s beauty and cool composure lies something cold and dangerous. Kimlang hates the new mistress because she herself has long dreamed of becoming the fourth wife and rising to wealth and comfort through the Ching family. She sees Khamkaew as the one who has stolen that place from her. Khamkaew, meanwhile, dislikes Kimlang just as much, finding her insolent, gossiping, and disrespectful.
Chao Sua then presents Khamkaew to his three existing wives.
The first is Meng Hway, his Chinese wife who has shared his hardships and success from the beginning. Though she has long lost her charm in her husband’s eyes, she still holds all authority within the household. She controls the servants, the finances, and the family interests, while Chao Sua leaves all domestic matters in her hands and no longer treats her as a wife in the usual sense. Meng Hway welcomes Khamkaew out of duty, though inwardly she deeply disapproves of her husband taking such a young new wife.
The second wife is Yen Ling, whom Chao Sua met in Singapore, where she posed as the ambassador’s niece. In truth, she is only a distant relative of the ambassador’s housemaid. But because she is beautiful, intelligent, and extraordinarily ambitious, she has mastered the manners and polish of high society so perfectly that she rose seamlessly into that role — and before long, into the position of Chao Sua’s second wife. Yen Ling receives Khamkaew warmly, though jealousy and cruelty flash now and then in the corners of her eyes.
The third wife is Mei Kwei, also called Rose, a former leading lady of a Chinese opera troupe. She is the most beautiful of all the wives. Bright, lively, flirtatious, and endlessly skilled in feminine tricks, Rose remains Chao Sua’s favorite, making the other wives deeply jealous. Khamkaew asks permission to go meet Rose herself, but Rose refuses to receive her, saying only that she is unwell. Khamkaew returns to her room with a strange and growing unease about the people in this house, where no one’s true heart can be trusted.
On the first night of marriage, Khamkaew feels no joy at all. Her husband feels to her like nothing more than an old crane. In the middle of the night, Chao Sua suddenly leaves her because Rose has fallen ill. No one knows what is really wrong with Rose, but the truth is that Chao Sua never comes back to Khamkaew’s room that night. Oddly, Khamkaew feels relieved to be alone. She spends the night thinking of Chiang Dao, her father, and the orange grove she once knew — all now lost forever.
Her days in the mansion become slow, oppressive, and full of dread. Beneath the Ching family’s wealth and grandeur, she senses darkness everywhere. There is the abandoned well behind the house — cold, ruined, and feared by everyone as the Hell Well. How many women, she begins to wonder, have met miserable deaths there? The jealousy and competition among Chao Sua’s wives soon become unbearable, and Khamkaew learns to live constantly on guard.
Gradually, Rose begins to visit and becomes Khamkaew’s companion. Though strange at first, she proves easy to talk to. She speaks of everything, from marital relations that embarrass Khamkaew to the ruthless competition among the wives. Rose’s chief enemy is Yen Ling, whom she sees as a woman with a smiling face and a tiger’s heart. They compete bitterly in bearing children. Rose triumphs by giving birth to a son before Yen Ling delivers her daughter, despite Yen Ling’s desperate effort to force an early birth with the doctor’s instruments. Rose laughs triumphantly, but Khamkaew is horrified by the cruelty and bitterness of it all.
Yen Ling, meanwhile, also tries to grow close to Khamkaew. One afternoon, she asks Khamkaew to trim her hair. Khamkaew repeatedly refuses, saying she knows nothing of cutting hair, but eventually an accident happens — the sharp scissors slice Yen Ling’s ear. Her shrieks and curses echo throughout the mansion. Khamkaew flees to her room in terror and hides there all afternoon. Yet the incident secretly delights both Rose and Meng Hway, who relish seeing proud Yen Ling humiliated.
On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, during the traditional day of paying respect to elder relatives, Khamkaew has her first chance to meet Khun Chai Yai, Kongkiat Jenpanichsakul, Meng Hway’s eldest son. The moment he sees her, he feels an inexplicable tenderness, pity, and warmth toward his young stepmother. Khamkaew feels something similar. Kongkiat does not live in the mansion but in his own house in Sathorn, where Chao Sua has entrusted him with the family’s business empire. Whenever they have the chance to speak, they feel more and more at ease together. Kongkiat plays the flute — the one instrument Khamkaew also loves — and he promises to find her a teacher. For the first time, life in the mansion seems a little less empty.
The music teacher turns out to be Ruangyot, Kongkiat’s handsome, almost feminine close friend. Watching them, Ruangyot grows increasingly uneasy. No one knows that he secretly loves Kongkiat himself. Eventually, he tells Khamkaew the truth: Kongkiat has feelings for her. The revelation fills her with both joy and sorrow, because she knows their love is utterly forbidden. Ruangyot watches her suffering with bitter satisfaction.
Then comes the grand celebration of Chao Sua’s 65th birthday, held on the seventh day of the twelfth month. All the wives appear in dazzling finery, while Khamkaew dresses in traditional Thai style, provoking great irritation in both Chao Sua and the others. During the event, Khun Chai Lek and Khun Noo Kannika — the son of Rose and the daughter of Yen Ling — accidentally knock over and shatter a fine vase while fighting. Meng Hway rushes in and slaps both stepchildren, then the mothers charge in, and soon all three wives are screaming and insulting one another. Irritated and exhausted, Khamkaew mutters that it is absurd for so much conflict to arise over one vase. Immediately, all three women turn on her, blaming her for bringing bad luck into the household. Unable to bear it anymore, Khamkaew slips away to the garden and breaks down in tears.
Later that afternoon, while resting, she dreams of many women clawing for life in terror. She wakes shaken, but forces herself to dress and rejoin the evening gathering. At dinner, in a desperate attempt to please Chao Sua, she embraces and kisses him openly in front of everyone. Instead of being pleased, he is disgusted and angrily pushes her away.
After that night, Chao Sua barely touches her again. At only twenty years old, Khamkaew feels as though she has already been cast aside. Desperate to survive, she sees only one path left: she must produce an heir. Following the example of the other wives, she uses every trick she can to draw Chao Sua back into her bed. This time she succeeds — but when dark red blood appears one day, she realizes she has failed. In despair, she decides on a dangerous deception: she pretends to be pregnant.
The news delights Chao Sua. He showers her with affection again, and Khamkaew feels, for a brief moment, victorious at last.
But her triumph is short-lived.
Kimlang discovers a bloodstained sanitary cloth floating in the toilet and realizes the pregnancy is a lie. She prepares to use it to destroy the fourth mistress she so hates. Khamkaew catches her in the act. Seeing the servant girl’s malicious eyes, she forces Kimlang to eat the bloodstained cloth. Weeping, Kimlang obeys. The story spreads through the red mansion that the fourth wife, though still so young, is monstrously cruel beyond imagination.
The shock terrifies Kimlang so badly that she falls ill and dies within days. Khamkaew herself is horrified and shaken by what she has done.
In the meantime, she grows closer to Rose, who becomes her confidante. But Rose is rarely home. She is the only wife who slips out to watch opera, gamble, and secretly meet her lover: Doctor Songchai, also called Mr. Soon Chai, the handsome owner of a Chinese medicine shop. They dream of one day escaping together. Rose sometimes takes Khamkaew with her on outings, and one day Khamkaew discovers the truth of their affair when she drops a mahjong tile under the table and sees two legs entwined beneath it. She warns Rose that such a forbidden love can never end well. Rose flies into a rage, curses her, and orders her never to interfere again.
But Rose’s secret affair has not escaped the sharp eyes of someone watching.
Lonely again, abandoned by her only friend, Khamkaew begins smoking and drinking heavily every night. One evening she is astonished when the person who enters her room is Kongkiat. He comes out of genuine concern — and to confess his love. It is both a dream and an agony to hear him say it. Overwhelmed, Khamkaew drinks again until she falls asleep amid fearful dreams and mounting confusion.
The next afternoon, chaos erupts in the corridor. Rose’s forbidden love has been exposed. Yen Ling has sent people to drag Rose back from her lover’s nest. Rose screams, cries, curses, and vows revenge, while Yen Ling looks on with cold satisfaction. At last, she has destroyed the beautiful rose that had long been a thorn in her side.
That night, at midnight, the sound of Chinese opera rises again — high, sweet, and filled with unbearable sorrow. It wakes Khamkaew. She parts the curtains and sees Rose, dancing beautifully one last time before strong men carry her away and throw her into the Hell Well. Khamkaew is so terrified she cannot even scream.
In utter desperation, she runs to the room of the one man she loves — Kongkiat. But when she pushes open the door, she sees a sight that freezes her heart: two naked men entwined in bed. One is Kongkiat, the man she worshipped. The other is his music-teacher friend Ruangyot. She closes the door in silence, shattered beyond repair.
At last, the final thread of her reason snaps.
Her screams draw Chao Sua into the room, where he finds his young wife tearing at her own hair and muttering only one word over and over: “Murderer.” He tries to calm her and call her back to herself, but it is too late. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Months later, Chao Sua returns from the United States with a new Western wife. Thanks to wealth and American surgery, he now looks astonishingly young again. Sometimes the new wife sees a fragile woman in a white dress — like a wedding gown — wandering through the flowering bushes, murmuring:
“Where is my orange blossom crown? Please help me find my orange blossom crown…”
But no one helps her.
No one hears Khamkaew’s plea.
Follow this haunting story in “Mongkut Dok Som” (The Orange Blossom Crown), airing every Wednesday–Thursday at 8:25 PM on Thai TV Channel 3, beginning with its first episode on Thursday, December 9, 2010.