The Kingdom of Bhutan is celebrating a milestone as Crown Prince Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck – son of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck (aka The Dragon King) and Queen Jetsun Pema of Bhutan – turns one this coming Sunday, 5 February.
Posing for his official birthday portrait at Lingkana Palace, the adorable heir to the throne beams while playing with a small toy car. The image was released as a downloadable desktop calendar by Yellow.bt, a relatively new website curated by the Royal Office for Media which aims to ‘describe Bhutan, her people, her hopes and dreams, and chronicles her journey to a bedazzling future’.
The calendars are released monthly, and this will be the second time the Dragon Prince had taken centre stage as he was also the focus of September 2016’s calendar, when he was six months old.
The Dragon Prince’s yellow ensemble seen in the photo was specially chosen to honour the sacred place the colour yellow holds in the hearts of Bhutanese. From the Yellow website:
‘Bright as the sun, Yellow is the colour of our King, the embodiment of hope, strength and happiness, the soul of Bhutan. It reminds us why we are proud, and how we look ahead to a greater tomorrow.’
King Jigme and Queen Jetsun Pema were married in October 2011 and the birth of their first child last year was honoured by the planting of 108,000 trees in Bhutan by thousands of volunteers. Known simply as The Gyalsey (‘the prince’) for the first few months of his life, the new-born Prince Jigme’s name was not announced to the world until 16 April 2016.
February is a month of many celebrations in the Kingdom of Bhutan as it also marks the Birth Anniversary of His Majesty the King on 21 February and Losar – the New Year in the Bhutanese Calendar – on 27 February.
