Sitttha first secured the loyalty of the Khmer nobility, as well as the leaders of the local Japanese, Malay and Portuguese communities from which he hired a hitman to carry out the crime.
"On the appointed day, in the evening of January 5, 1642, while Paramaraja was playing his customary game of cards with some of his nobles, the chamberlain approached him from behind and stabbed him to death with a Japanese dagger he had hidden under his clothes."
In the 1630s, the Dutch East India Company established a post in Phnom Penh, mainly for the purchase of deerskins; the governor general at the time was Anthony van Diemen.
The following years were marked by almost unceasing conflict as court politics were factionalized between those linked to Ayutthaya and those who were pro-Vietnamese, while hopes of stability were further undermined by another Nguyen invasion in 1673.
Nguyễn Phúc Ngọc Vạn, a consort of his father, who had supported his ascension to the throne at an early stage, preserved her position as "queen mother" with her own palace and court.
Vietnamese merchants became more active in Cambodia at this time, particularly buying rice needed to supply the heavily militarized population among the walls on their northern frontier.
This greatly annoyed the representative of the Duch East Indies Company, Pieter van Regemortes, who persisted in his attempts to dissuade the new king from his anti-Dutch stance, with the inevitable result that relations between the two men deteriorated.
Royal Chronicles of Cambodia from 1594 to 1677 were edited and published by Mak Phoeun in 1981 with the support of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, but historians such as Michael Vickery or Sok Khin[11] have criticized their accuracy.