In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep
Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, a realm that stretched from the lus
h Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mig
hty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the Britis
h, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond.
Exiled
to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suff
olk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic
birds. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic
Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace-and-favour lodgings at Hampton
Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages
. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India
, she returned a revolutionary.
