The most popular biographies are those that embrace the subject's life while assuming little prior historical knowledge on the part of the reader. The author weaves into the narrative details of the period so the experience of reading the book is akin to that of reading a good novel. Anita Anand's brightly told, fascinating life of Sophia Duleep Singh is such an account.
The book begins conventionally enough, with Sophia's grandfather, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, known with love and awe as the Lion of the Punjab. He ruled over vast regions of northern India, much of it verdant country rich in minerals and coveted by the British and Afghanistan. After he died peacefully in his sleep in 1839, the imperial hawks began to circle.
Sophia's father Maharajah Duleep Singh came to the throne at the age of 3, with his determined mother, Jindan, as regent. In 1847, when he was only 9, Duleep was torn from his mother, when she was sent to prison. Two years later, after the second Anglo-Sikh War, he was tricked into signing the Treaty of Lahore. He "signed away his kingdom, his fortune and his family's future". A further loss was the enormous, famous diamond Koh-I-Noor, which his father had worn strapped to his arm as an amulet. When Duleep was next to see it, years later, it had been cut and faceted and was in the possession of Queen Victoria, who was to play a large part in his life and that of his children.
Sent as a boy to England, Duleep was supported by the India Office and raised as an English gentleman, with little understanding of what he had lost.
Handsome and profligate, he married unhappily and had many progeny on both sides of the blanket. Sophia was one of his legitimate children, born in England in 1876, with Queen Victoria as her attentive godmother.
