Sophia, the youngest, was brought up at Elveden, Duleep's extravagant country house in East Anglia, as Queen Victoria's godchild.īuffeted by a turbulent political history, the male Indian characters in this story are rarely unblemished and try the patience of their India Office guardians with their gambling, drinking and profligate ways. Duleep Singh married Bamba, beautiful illegitimate daughter of a German merchant and an Abyssinian slave raised by missionaries in Cairo, and their five surviving children were born in luxurious exile in London's Belgravia. With his mother in prison or exile, the boy was brought alone to England, where he converted to Christianity and became the pet of Queen Victoria. After Maharajah Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, the East India Company, as was its wont, asserted its influence over his last surviving heir, Duleep Singh, annexing by stealth the Punjab – along with its crown jewel, the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond – in 1849, when the prince was 11.
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