Although the Palace Law on Succession worked in 1925, there remained some underlying problems. King Prajadhipok wrote in 1926 that the law still embodied the two distinct and rather contradictory principles that had long characterized succession in Siam: "the principle of election and the principle of hereditary succession". For example, if the king did not designate his own successor, the throne was to go to one of his sons. King Prajadhipok remarked, ""This sounded straightforward enough, but a complication arises here owing to the habit of polygamy."" The law specified that the next king was to be chosen according to the rank of his mother, the queen. But there were four ranks of queen, and this arrangement was complicated by the fact that the rank of a queen could either be raised or lowered "according to the whims of the king". Thus several people could still make competitive claims to the throne. King Prajadhipok observed: ""This, to my mind, creates very great possibilities of complications."" In addition, he was not convinced that the flexibility in the law, which allowed for a monarch to choose a successor who would please the people, could be properly applied.