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Or follow the link in the episode description. The 1956 Hollywood The King Monquet of Siamonkett of Siam, who from a Western perspective was a hitherto obscure figure.

In the musical, an English teacher, played by Deborah Kerr, drags the monarch of a seemingly insulated and somewhat backward country

into the modern world.

As is so often the case, the Hollywood version of history was far from the truth.

Though Monckett didn't break science and technology,

he wasn't the first Siamese ruler to do so.

Some 200 years earlier, King Narai of a Yotia sought out cutting edge technology

and formed alliances with powerful figures such as King Louis, the 14th of France.

In this episode I speak with Australian historian

Dr Ian Hodges about Nari,

his reign, his reign, and his eventual successor, the better known King Monquet.

Nari was born in 1632. His father had recently usurped the throne of a Utea, a Siamese kingdom based in what today we call Thailand.

Tradition holds that the child was born with a strange birth defect. He had four arms.

The two additional appendages mysteriously vanished shortly after his birth.

But to the onlookers, this bizarre occurrence tied him to the fore-armed Hindu god Vishnu. Seeing it as a sign, his father, King Prasat Thong, named him

Narii after Narayana, one of the many forms that Vishnu took.

After King Prasset's death, the throne passed to Naray's brother Chai, but

...