Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.
Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond.Įxiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys and exotic birds. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty.
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