Maharaja Duleep Singh

Duleep Singh was born in 1838, the youngest son of Ranjit Singh and Jind Kaur, and was placed on the throne of Lahore at five in 1843. After the Second Anglo-Sikh War the British annexed the Punjab in 1849 and the ten-year-old Maharaja signed away his kingdom and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

He was separated from his mother, placed in the care of a British doctor, John Login, at Fatehgarh, and converted to Christianity at fourteen. In 1854 he went to England, where Queen Victoria took a liking to him; he lived as a country gentleman at Elveden in Suffolk, shooting and gambling.

Reunited with his mother in 1861, he learned from her what had been taken from him. He turned against the British, demanded his estates, and in 1886 set out for India to retake his kingdom, returning to the Sikh faith at Aden on the way. He was stopped and spent his last years in Paris, plotting with Irish and Russian revolutionaries. He died there in 1893 and is buried at Elveden. His daughter Sophia Duleep Singh became a leading suffragette.