The Stolen Prince In Queen Victoria’s Court D
duip sing became Infamous for his fall from power and intense inner demons yet so few know what went on behind closed doors and his friendenemy Queen Victoria likely hoped his tragic ends sealed his worst Secrets forever now they’re finally exposed but before we get to that let’s dive into the fascinating life of duip Singh Maharaja deip Singh was the only son of two giants of the sick Empire Maharaja Ranjit Singh the lion of the Punjab and his formidable wife jind cor but this lineage didn’t save him from horror although he had eight older half brothers seven of them died by the time delip himself was just a child and unfortunately for the young boy that was just the first blow in a series of tragedies despite his Royal titles delip seemed Born Under a Bad Sign after all his father was already terminally ill by the time he came into the world and had died of a stroke
before Del turned one leip never really got to know his father and only had the legends of his great feats to sustain him as we’ll see these were definitely not enough like so much else in his life delip came to the throne through Unthinkable violence when he was just 5 years old his Elder half brother Sher Singh who was the current Maharaja was assassinated after only 3 years in power with the throne unstable not to mention dangerous the toddling boy was shoved into the role under the guidance of his cunning mother Jin core and then his troubles really started in 1846 delip suffered his first crushing defeat and it was at the hands of his soon to be greatest enemy Britain the Anglo sick war was an utter disaster for the baby ruler and his mother and they lost immense power and territory their defeat was so bad it turned delip into a mere figurehead ruler times were desperate and they called for desperate measures
delp’s mother jind was no fool and she soon came up with a cun plot to consolidate her son’s power she engaged him to T core the daughter of a powerful governor and Noble from another province with this new alliance delip thought he was finally going to be on the winning side of things but fate had another twist in store the British were watching delip and his mother very closely and they immediately shut down the marriage Prospect to keep him dependent on them did this deter delip no though he couldn’t have his bride he and his mother often refused to bend to the demands of the British the British were starting to realize that they had two tough customers on their hands in delip sing and Jin core their Vengeance was unforgettably heartless getting it delip through his mother they imprisoned jind violently separating her from her son all while slashing her pension by more than 2/3 yet that was just the beginning of the nightmare delip already suffered long months without his mother but he
was about to experience what true separation meant cruy deciding that imprisonment wasn’t enough the British then completely exiled Del leip’s mother from Punjab taking her to a far away Fort and even stealing her valuable jewelry you know to render her all the more helpless but that was the least of the family’s worries tragically Jin cor’s Exile was long and brutal although the Wy Maharani managed to escape the Fortress and hotfoot it to Nepal she was stuck there for 11 long years making for 13 whole years away from her beloved Son throughout this time the British didn’t permit delip to see her even once and well without his mother delip got into big trouble unfortunately for the young Maharaja the second Anglo sick war fell hot on the heels of the first in 1849 it brought true disaster that year destabilized beyond all hope the sick empire fell delip fell with it losing
his throne at just 10 years old with an outof work Maharaj on their hands the British put delip under the guardianship of Scottish surgeon Dr John Logan without a mother and without a kingdom delip traveled far away from lore to Fatar while there his captors subjected him to extreme restrictions on who he could see apart from British yes-men servants his wardens prevented him from socializing with any of his fellow Indians in private and there reasons behind this were chilling in sending delip to live with Dr John Logan the British were Shameless ly and barefaced trying to purge all the sick Customs delip had ever learned and sought to replace them with British culture everything they did from this point on whether outwardly cruel or seemingly benign was part of their broader policy to culturally anglicize him as deeply as possible this had grave consequences this regime of extreme
individual colonization very likely contributed to Young delp’s frequently poor health he often had to convalesce for weeks at a time at a hill station in the lower Himalaya it was a grueling 4-day journey to his ultimate destination dubbed the castle and it probably didn’t help his dangerously frail State either but the weaker he got the more power the British took in 1853 something in delip snapped after his intense crash course in britishness he converted to Christianity as a 14-year-old teenager much to the Delight of Dr login and the other British ministers circling around him the nominal Maharaja of the sick Empire was a sick no more only the British weren’t done with him yet in 1854 like his mother before him the British government sent delip into Exile unlike his mother they didn’t send him to an Indian Fortress they sent him to England call it Phase 2 of their turned him into a Brit plan and it worked a little too
well he lived in England for nearly the rest of his short life and he made quite a splash the British were playing good cop during this time and they began began lavishing delip with honors parties and feasts and then came one of the defining moments of his life he went to the court of Queen Victoria and she and her husband Prince Albert took an immediate liking to him showering him with royal affection the queen even invited him to stay at her rural summer home Osborne house that’s where it all got very strange old Vicki took quite the liking to the teenage delip she even waxed poetic about his dark good looks writing those eyes and those teeth are too beautiful all this despite the fact that Victoria was nearly 20 years delip senior and very much in a position of power over him and she certainly didn’t mind flexing that position when it suited her while staying at Osborne house dele became something of a royal muse no less than Queen Victoria herself
sketched him while Prince Albert photographed him the court artist also made his portrait cementing Depp’s position in the Victorian Court it seemed like the British had won another assimilation victory over delip but inside delip was raging to get out within a year of his arrival in England delip itched to return home to India and asked if he could travel back he was doomed to heartbreak still fearing his power the British rebuffed his request then suggested he tour the European continent instead not quite a gap year with a Euro rail pass but it was the closest delip would ever get when he got back to England though he got one Indecent Proposal upon his return to England In 1855 the British gave 17-year-old delip a yearly pension of £25,000 a massive sum for the Times only it very much came with strings attached the queen only granted him this pension on the condition that delip remain
obedient to the British government it was a steep price to pay for a man who should have been ruling his own Empire and yet he kept that promise for a while when delip turned 18 his thoughts turned sharply towards his mother jind who was still holed up in Katmandu Nepal fearing for her life and cursing the British determined to see her again deip wrote to her asking her to join him in England instead what he got was a harsh betrayal the British intercepted this letter making sure it never got to her so delip simply had to try again ever the dedicated if distant son delip tried to reach his mother again this time he sent a human rather than a letter to let his mother know he wanted to see her unfortunately for the Royal mother and son evil stepmother England was as good at tracking couriers as she was male Victoria’s minions also intercepted Depp’s Courier and prevented them from reaching Maharani jind then delip had to
get creative Jin core had raised no fool and delip soon realized that the only man for the job was his own damn self first he used the pretext of a tiger shoot in Bengal all to slip free of British eyes and get geographically closer to his mother then using every ounce of cunning she’d given him he wrote to the British resident in katundu craftily hiding his letter within one from his Guardian Dr login this subterfuge worked and the resident wrote back with an update about jind the Letter’s contents were harrowing the years had not been kind to Del Singh but they had treated his mother much worse although the British had once nicknamed jyn the mesalina of the Punjab because of her own steadfast opposition to their rule the letter delip received revealed her Grim current condition she was now blind and had lost much of her characteristic fire however there was a Bittersweet Silver Lining the maharani’s decline meant that the Brits were
finally not so terrified of her upon receiving news of her themselves they finally allowed delip to see her for the first time since he was a young boy the heartfelt reunion took place in January 1861 at Spence’s hotel in Kata when delip was 22 and his mother was approaching her mid-40s yet once more the British had underestimated the former Indian rulers delp’s long-awaited reunion with his mother happened to coincide with the return to Kolkata of several sick regiments who had been off fighting their response nearly caused a catastrophe when they heard their Maharaja and his mother were in town they demonstrated outside of Spence’s Hotel striking fear Fe of rebellion into the hearts of the British only this didn’t have the end Depp’s mother might have wished for the British were quaking in their boots when they saw the soldiers gathering in the name of delip so much so that the governor general of India himself Lord canning personally
asked delip to take the next boat back to England to quell the rumbles luckily for canning delip obeyed perhaps foiling his last real chance to renew the fight for his rightful Kingdom nonetheless delip struck back in other ways not satisfied with his mother’s son reunion delip also fought to reunite his mother with her long lost Jewels for all these years the British had kept these gems in a treasury and delip successfully negotiated for their return it wasn’t their Kingdom but at least it was something and he could put his mother back in the glamour she deserved yet it all came too little too late in 1863 the biggest tragedy of delp’s Life hit after barely a year of living in Britain his mother Jin core finally succumbed to her lifetime of Torment passing at the still young age of 46 although delip was at least beside her when it happened it was small comfort for all the years the British had taken
from him but just as one chapter of his life ended another began the next year delip traveled to Bombay to put his mother’s ashes to rest since the British wouldn’t allow him to do it in her hometown of lore still this ended up being a fateful decree while returning from Bombay delip stepped off in Cairo and took a tour around a local girl school while there he literally met his Destiny one of the instructors at the school was the beautiful part Ethiopian part German bumba Mueller the illegitimate child of a prominent Banker crucially Mueller was also a devout Christian one of the only ones at the institution delip must have liked what he saw because after he met her he began gifting the school with incredibly lavish gifts still he may have kept his crush on the down low for a reason when delip got back to England and his old friend ofy Queen Victoria a strange kind of pressure began mounting Victoria had decided that now that his mother was
well and truly out of the way it was time for delip to marry in particular Victoria wanted him to make a match with a British assimilated Indian princess because you know who else would be worthy but delip had other ideas forever wiggling underneath Victorian meddling delip decided he didn’t want a perfect British subject instead he wanted someone less sophisticated AKA less touched by colonialism and he had just the idea he wrote to the old girl school in Cairo and asked the missionaries there if they could recommend anyone who was both Christian and of Eastern descent considering bumba was the only one who fit that description me thinks delip already knew who he wanted but that didn’t mean he had a smooth time of it you might might think that a proposal from a prince would make any girl say yes but delp’s reality was much different Bumbo was reluctant to uproot her life and stopped teaching children which she considered her main ambition
in life eventually though she grew to believe this was God’s way of saying go get him girl and she consented to him which is where things got truly awkward when it came time for Del’s official proposition to bumba it was mighty hard to get much romance in delip Spoke zero Arabic while Mueller spoke spoke only Arabic and he had to use an intermediary just to pop the question in fact when the pair married in a small ceremony in Alexandria in 1864 they spoke their vows in different languages quirky right unfortunately their future was less quirky more devastating in 1865 delip was expecting his very first child with bumba who was due any day now but it all ended in Blood and Tears although bum gave birth to his son that year the boy died just a day later without the couple ever even giving him a name for deep and bumba who had both seen so much hardship
it must have been a crushing blow delip reacted the only way he knew how Del knew that if at first you don’t succeed ignore the trauma and try again eventually he and bumba had a whopping six healthy children together most of whom made it into adulthood and had glittering lives among both the British and the Indian Elite all in all the pair were married for over two decades but behind bedroom doors it was no fairy tale if you believe the rumors delip was far from faithful to bumba in fact he was obsessed with one other woman in particular the French princess aah Douglas Weil as the years wore on delip got restless in his marriage and domestic duties to Mueller and began spending more and more time with Weil and that wasn’t all he was Restless about in 1886 delip got another irresistible pull to return home to India and this time he didn’t take no
for an answer amid objections from the India office he set sail with bumba and his children until it all unraveled after catching up to him in the middle eastern city of Aiden the British arrested him and demanded that he turn back in Queen Victoria’s name delip did not do this no his response was 10 times more jaw-dropping upon receiving this ultimatum from the British delip fled to Paris without his family yes he seriously abandoned bumba and the children to their own Fates instead preferring to go solo to France and that wasn’t all when he got to the city of love his long-term mistress aah Weil reportedly shacked up with him too damn delip come on man a mere year after her husband chucked her at the border to abcon with another woman bumba Mueller died at just 39 years old delip prayed
her with stunning cruelty 2 years later he made things official with Weil and married her going on to have two more children with the Royal mistress turned wife oh but they got to come up and you don’t get through that kind of explosive midlife crisis quietly and one person in particular noticed that delip was coming apart at the seams Queen Victoria well she was not amused Forever After Victoria refused to meet adah Weil in any kind of polite company citing her respect for bomba Mueller’s memory even though his return to India plan was foiled delip managed to stick it to the British in another way he got reinitiated into sism he had wanted his reconversion ceremony to take place in the homeland of both himself and his faith but managed to pull off a more casual impromptu one in Aiden while he was being detained the maharaj’s cousin was instrumental in both his reintroduction to sism and this
successful reinitiation as he sent emissaries to Aiden to accomplish the ladder the queen could keep the Maharaja from India but she couldn’t keep Indians from the Maharaja with this accomplished delip set his sights on a violent aim at this point delip was very much in an off phase of his onoff toxic friendship with Queen Victoria and he let her know it under no uncertain terms while living in in Paris delip and his then mistress Ada traveled to St Petersburg Russia his mission convince the Zar to invade India through the North and reinstall him as ruler unfortunately the Zar did not take the bait adding further Intrigue to their odd Dynamic of crush and controller Queen Victoria ended up being the Godmother to many of Del sing’s children though there could have been a disturbing motive behind this quite likely this was yet another Power move Victoria used it to limit delip and his children’s opportunities to reclaim
their rightful throne in India we also can’t forget that the young delip had been the owner of the renowned KO Noor one of the largest cut diamonds on Earth as a child delip wore it in court at lore fastened to his arm but it suffered a dark fate the British seized it as a spoil of War giving it to Queen Victoria for her own crown jewels collection in 1861 Queen Victoria continued her strategic agulation of Maharaja deip Singh naming him one of the first handful of knights in the brand spanking New Order of the Star of India this appointment netted him the Appalachian sir in addition to his long standing and long Limited in terms of real power title of Maharaja while in the United Kingdom delip took a liking to Scotland and at age 20 managed to rent a castle there from a Scottish Earl he quickly set about making a name for himself self though not always for the best reasons the surrounding commoners
knew him for his luxurious lifestyle and his shooting parties as well as his pensent for dressing in Highland costume these habits quickly had him dubbed the black prince of perthshire though it was largely unwillingly and at the behest of the British Empire delip was a bit of a globe troter throughout his troubled life and true to style died outside of his putative homes of India and England Instead at only 55 delip took his last breath in Paris after suffering a stroke one might hope he was finally freed from his life under British tyranny but one further indignity loomed duip explicitly wanted his family to return his body to India upon his death but like his many wishes to return home while he was still alive the British denied this one too fearing the Insurrection his homecoming might froment instead they buried his body next to that of his wife Maharani bambba following Christian rights even
in death the crown couldn’t risk Maharaja dulip Singh’s power over his people if you enjoyed learning about the extraordinary life of duip Singh don’t forget to like And subscribe for more awesome content
