However, the French authorities ultimately selected his 19-year-old nephew Norodom Sihanouk as king,[2] though Norindeth was made a member of the Council of Regency.
The Liberals were broadly pro-French and advocated a gradual approach to self-rule, maintaining strong French links: Norindeth hoped to gain the guaranteed support of the elite, anticommunists, and the country's Cham minority.
[1] Unlike their main rivals, the radical and pro-independence Democratic Party of Ieu Koeus and Prince Sisowath Youtevong, the Liberals were heavily funded by the French, who backed them covertly as a way of maintaining their influence.
Norindeth returned to Cambodia in 1951 and was to leave the Liberal Party and join Sihanouk's Sangkum political movement after its formation in 1955.
Norindeth was one of the many members of the Cambodian royal family who were killed subsequent to the Khmer Rouge takeover in April 1975.