With an English Heritage blue plaque at Hampton Court Palace, a major exhibition at Kensington Palace, and Anita Anand’s landmark biography, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh’s story is now reaching the wide audience it deserves. Princess Sophia’s visibility has done something useful and valuable: it has brought other women in the Duleep Singh family into the light.

But I am stepping back from Sophia now - and applying, in doing so, a little more scrutiny for the bigger picture.

Sophia was the most privileged of the Duleep Singh princesses. She was Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, protected to a degree that prompted King George V to ask his advisers, “Have we no hold on her?” Lord Crewe’s response is instructive: the King could, if he chose, confiscate her grace-and-favour home at Hampton Court Palace - the residence Queen Victoria had given to Sophia and her sisters Bamba and Catherine. But not to their half-sisters Princesses Pauline and Irene, who were only little girls when their father Maharajah Duleep Singh died.

That inequality between the two sets of sisters from the Maharaja’s two marriages matters enormously when it comes to the balancing scales of justice - and its weight becomes almost unbearable when you read Princess Irene’s final words before her death: “I am homeless.”

Princess Irene Duleep Singh's wedding portrait, taken by Ellis & Walery, society photographers renowned for their portraits of aristocracy and royalty. (Pre-1944 public domain: The Sketch, 30 March 1910. © Illustrated London News Group. Courtesy of The British Library Board. Via British Newspaper Archive)

“I am homeless”

Some accounts sideline Princesses Pauline and Irene on the grounds that they did not join the suffrage movement as Sophia and her sisters did. But this reflects a failure of imagination and logic.

Shelter is a foundational human need - the base of Maslow’s hierarchy - before any other activity becomes possible.

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh enjoyed the privilege to sell The Suffragette magazine at the gates of a royal palace because she had been granted a grace-and-favour home there. Her half-sisters, Princesses Pauline and Irene, did not enjoy such luxury.

So my research focus has shifted - naturally, and with conviction - toward the princesses who remain least visible and with the greater need.

Centenary 2026

In 2026, I am Team Irene (primarily), Pauline, and Lady Anne Coventry.

Justice, equality and true fairness means addressing the needs of those with the least privilege, not celebrating those with the most.

And what better moment to raise this than when Kensington Palace centres Princess Sophia’s 150th birthday in the very centenary year of Princess Irene’s death by suicide?

The three women The Last Princesses of Punjab does not yet do justice to are:

1. Princess Irene Duleep Singh, whose centenary - one hundred years since her death in 1926 - falls this year;

2. Princess Pauline Duleep Singh, who died estranged from her half-sisters in German-occupied France in 1941; and

3. Lady Anne Blanche Alice Coventry - Princess Victor Duleep Singh through an interracial marriage that challenged the status quo - who does not even appear on Kensington Palace’s exhibition’s family tree under her title, despite living until 1956: the year of Princess Bamba’s final birthday, just months before Princess Bamba herself died in March 1957 as the family’s last survivor.

These are the three main stories I am working to bring to light through 2026.

Easter Sunday. Who is Princess Victor Duleep Singh?

Lady Anne Coventry. She married Prince Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh - brother of Princess Sophia, and half-brother of Princess Irene - on 4 January 1898.

Their against-the-odds marriage was described as the first interracial marriage between titled families in Britain, made possible only through the personal intervention of the future King Edward VII.

Described as a happy couple, the marriage was childless. Prince Victor died in 1918, the year Coventry gained Cathedral status.

Lady Anne Coventry carried on another thirty-eight years until 1956. She never remarried. Lady Anne Coventry chose to be buried with her one and only husband Prince Victor Duleep Singh at the Anglican Cemetery above Monte Carlo - the Cimetière de Monaco.

Coventry: Princess Victor Duleep Singh and Princess Irene

I thank Maggi Davis and the Friends of Croome for their research into Princess Victor Duleep Singh's remarkable and neglected life. Lady Anne Coventry (Princess Victor Duleep Singh) appears to have been close to Princess Irene, whose centenary year, 2026, this is.

In the lead-up to my Heritage Open Days event about Princess Irene in September 2025, I made enquiries about whether the man who holds the largest private collection of Duleep Singh material had yet located Princess Irene’s grave. From the press reports, it seemed likely that if she had been buried, it would be in Monaco - the same cemetery as Lady Anne Coventry and Prince Victor Duleep Singh. I was uncertain whether the grave was marked, or whether Irene had been cremated, as her mother Ada Douglas Wetherill had been in 1930, four years after Princess Irene died in 1926.

Sacred Ground

What I did not expect from my enquiries was a public Instagram announcement on 19 October 2025 - 99 years and 11 days after Princess Irene died in Monaco on 8 October 1926. The post announced the discovery that since finding Prince Victor Duleep Singh’s grave in 2003 (with no mention of Lady Anne Coventry, who shares that grave with Victor and who commissioned it), there was another Duleep Singh in the same cemetery and then the camera led us to Irene’s resting place.

I saw no flower for a woman who, at the point of her death, clearly felt unloved and unwanted.

The announcement caption read, in part: “Little did I discover until recently that his sister Princess Irene was also buried there... The full story will be covered in detail in my new book.”

Four things are worth noting

1. First: Prince Victor Duleep Singh is not alone in that grave. He shares it with his wife, Lady Anne Coventry, who commissioned it.

2. Second: the language “committed suicide” is no longer appropriate. Princess Irene died by suicide. “Committed” is the language of crime. For example, one does not commit a heart attack.

3. Third: Princess Irene had two names - Villemant and Duleep Singh. Her marriage to Pierre Villemant was reportedly unhappy, but I note that his name has kept her resting place private for nearly a century. Thank you Pierre (the French for Peter, meaning rock or stone).

4. Fourth: “The full story will be covered in detail in my new book.” On sacred ground, the question must be asked: is this an act of charity, or of commerce?

Scholarship can be charity and commerce. But on sacred ground it cannot be both charity and commerce. One or the other. Not half. Not Both.

Because if there is one Duleep Singh grave that calls for particular care, it is Irene's. Her final will, made shortly before her untimely and tragic death by suicide, bequeathed everything she possessed to charity - to Dr Barnardo's homes for poor children. It can be read in many ways: a painful acknowledgment and acceptance of hers and her family’s childless fate and deadly destiny.

So, to approach Irene’s grave in any spirit other than charity is, at the very least, worth questioning. In French it is written in bold exactly whose daughter Irene Villemant is.

Thanking Linda Davis on 25 Oct 2022 (findagrave.com). Thank you for the flower.

FILLE DU MAHARAJAH

DULEEP SINGH

A warning. Daughter of Maharajah Duleep Singh. Approach with caution.

Princess Irene holds a unique place in the lineage of Sikh Empire Royalty from Punjab, India, as the last-born child and first-dead Duleep Singh princess. Princess Irene’s father Maharajah Duleep Singh surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria: who was cautious of the legend of its curse.

“He who owns this diamond will own the world but will know all its misfortunes. Only God or a woman can wear it with impunity.”

Queen Victoria solution to the riddle was to simply give the Koh-i-Noor diamond (that she and Prince Albert had cut down) to women in the British Royal Family. But that simplistic solution never accounted for the ‘or’. God can wear this diamond with impunity too.

What was the solution to God? Atheism? God doesn’t exist. Woman does. Simples… for some.

A protective blessing to some is a curse to others who may harm them. The Koh-i-Noor curses are said to keep most men - and some women - at bay.

Princess Irene Duleep Singh (Madame Villemant) is not for sale.

Sent to Coventry

Sent to Coventry is a British idiom meaning to be deliberately ostracised - ignored, excluded, treated as though you do not exist. Its probable origins is from the English Civil War, when Royalist prisoners were sent to the Parliamentarian stronghold of Coventry, where locals refused to acknowledge them. But it is an apt idiom for the Duleep Singh family in Britain after the Maharajah tried and failed to reclaim the kingdom he signed away, along with the Koh-i-Noor, as a ten year old child. A mere boy king.

In many ways, Princess Irene was sent to Coventry. But it turns out to be a wonderful stroke of good fortune - because Coventry, of course, is the name of her half-brother’s wife who is in the same cemetery as her. Lady Anne Coventry.

“Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers, Lest They be Angels in Disguise”

- George Whitman paraphrases biblical advice from Hebrews 13:2 to show kindness to travellers, as they may be divine messengers

My first meal of 2026 was Langar at Coventry Cathedral’s new site - a good way to begin Princess Irene’s centenary year.

In March 1956 the new Coventry cathedral’s foundation stone was laid by Queen Elizabeth II. A few months later year on 2nd July 1956 Lady Anne Coventry died and she was laid to rest with her husband Prince Victor Duleep Singh. A few months later the last surviving Duleep Singh, Princess Bamba, would have her last birthday in September 1956. Three dates in 1956 dates align with quiet precision.

Langar is the Sikh tradition of egalitarian communal feeding - open to all, regardless of status, faith, or background. No one sits higher than another at that table. Coventry Cathedral has been a symbol of Christian reconciliation since the Second World War, rebuilt deliberately beside its bombed ruins as an act of peace.

Princess Pauline Duleep Singh - Torry after her short marriage - died in Vichy France in 1941, the same war that destroyed the original Coventry cathedral. I can only imagine how Pauline coped in the years between: her sister Irene dying by suicide in Monaco in 1926, their mother Ada passing away in England in 1930. She inherited the bulk of both estates, but money does not compensate for loss of life - loss of sister and mother. I wonder if a clean separation from her three half-sisters may have been part of her coping strategy - because the contest for Irene's estate, after she died by suicide, would have been revealing to Pauline.

The details on the grave of Prince Victor Duleep Singh and Lady Anne Coventry in Monaco directed me, through her father’s name, to that city, that cathedral, that meal. Something nurtured between two traditions - like a Sikh child held in a Christian space - finding its way, eventually, to the table.

Lady Anne Coventry had already challenged the status quo by marrying Prince Victor in the first interracial marriage between titled individuals - her father, the 9th Earl of Coventry, a conservative man requiring some persuasion from the then Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. I find myself wondering about the contents of that conversation. The Coventry family seat at Croome sits within the Diocese of Worcester - which was divided in 1918 to create the new Diocese of Coventry, with Coventry's parish church elevated to cathedral status. 1918: the year Prince Victor Duleep Singh died without heir. The future King of the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets, negotiating with an aristocratic English Earl about his daughter's marriage to an Indian prince. What currency passes in a conversation like that?

There is a claim that, at Buckingham Palace, Lady Anne Coventry - Princess Victor Duleep Singh after marriage - is said to have kept her word to Queen Victoria, who, as Prince Victor's godmother, had urged her not to have children with him. Queens are powerful. But the Queen of England and Empress of India claims the mantel of Christian leadership of the Church of England.

Queen Victoria was a woman, not a god. Even a godmother is still just a woman. Godmother means neither God nor mother.

How interesting that I went to Coventry Cathedral to be fed, and not to Coventry the idiom to be silenced. New Year’s Day 2026: the stone walls of Coventry Cathedral fed me from Khalsa Aid with Langar Aid in ways that Lady Anne Coventry’s womb never fed a royal Sikh child.

Sometimes being sent to Coventry is a wonderful stroke of good fortune.

The dead have allies

Maharajah Duleep Singh and His Dead Royal Family are not for commercial sale. For sale beyond meeting necessary expenses - no.

But for serious scholarship - yes. Because this is serious. For heritage - yes. Because heritage is Langar for our roots. For learning - yes. Because Sikhs are learners.

Maharajah Duleep Singh and His Dead Royal Family are not for commercial sale.

Both the Christian and Sikh traditions share a core commitment to charity - and at their most demanding, to giving everything away. Maharajah Duleep Singh is buried on consecrated Christian ground. His family's story sits at the intersection of two faiths, two empires, and a justice still unresolved. His mother Jind Kaur, Queen Victoria, his first wife Maharani Bamba, and his first three daughters Bamba, Catherine and Sophia are currently on show in an exhibition titled The Last Princesses of Punjab at Kensington Palace.

Ken[SINGH]ton Palace

The sirens cannot resist the melodic pun. Ken-SINGH-ton. ‘The Last Princesses of Punjab’.

Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that Princesses Pauline, Irene, and Victor Duleep Singh are so scarce in this exhibition. Some silences shelter. Some absences protect.

A private archive assembled in the name of the Maharajah Duleep Singh family is appreciated. Just as Apollo appreciates the business savvy of Hermes - Mercury, and whatever new brand the god of commerce uses now. Then Artemis - Diana, and whatever new name the goddesses uses now - arrives...

But the question must be asked plainly: is the collection assembled in the name of Maharajah Duleep Singh and his family an act of charity - giving voice to the voiceless - or commercial control that profits from a dead royal family's silence?

Private family photographs. Private possessions. An inheritance with nowhere to go, because there were no children to receive it. How wise is it to take ownership of that legacy as a private collection in one's own family home?

Is there open access and equal opportunity for researchers to engage with this material in a library or museum - to feed a genuine hunger for knowledge about Punjab's Anglo-Sikh heritage? Is this the serious scholarship it is claimed to be?

Few who enjoy access to the Duleep Singh archive will risk challenging the gatekeeping that currently grants them access privileges. Courage is not easy. Virtues are not supposed to be easy because virtues are uncommon. But the Duleep Singhs are not the exclusive private property of those who hold what they had to leave behind in the land of the living when they joined the dead.

The Duleep Singhs Are Guarded by the Jurisdiction of the Dead.

Just because a royal family is under the jurisdiction of the dead does not mean a divine response to injustice is impossible. Resurrection and rebirth are not only metaphors. They are reminders that humans are mortal, and do not know everything.

Lest we forget.

“My peace I give unto you.” - John XIX:27

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