Maharaja Duleep Singh and family

Maharaja Duleep Singh of Lahore was the last Sikh ruler of the Punjab. The youngest son of Maharaja Runjit Singh (1780–1839), Duleep Singh was declared Maharaja of the Punjab in 1843 at the age of five. Following the British annexation of the territory in 1849 he was forced to renounce all claims of sovereignty in exchange for a British government pension of £40,000 a year. He converted to Christianity in 1853 and settled in England in 1854.

In 1864, Duleep Singh married Bamba Müller in Cairo and established his family home at Elveden Hall in Suffolk. He eventually became disaffected and embittered with the British, returning to India in 1886 where he reverted to Sikhism. He later lived in Paris and launched a renewed claim on the Punjab. He died in Paris in 1893, two years after a final reconciliation with Queen Victoria.