Elizabeth Becker, the author of "When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution," told CNN after the king abdicated in 2004 that Sihanouk was "larger than life" and brought both good and bad to his country.
He tried to bring Cambodia into the modern world and protect it from its neighbors, but he brought about divisions in the process, she said.
"He threw his prestige and politics behind the Khmer Rouge when they started the rebellion and it was his name that helped convince a lot of peasants to go along with the Khmer Rouge," Becker told CNN.
"Then later, after the Vietnamese invasion, he continued to help the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations with political prestige, so his is a very checkered legacy."
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