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Here is a rare glimpse behind purdah's curtain into the lives of four brilliant maharanis-the wives of Maharajas-who helped shepherd princely India into the twentieth century. Tracing the lives of these influential women from the final days of the raj and the British Empire to the present, Lucy Moore vividly re-creates a splendid lost world as well as describes the growing pains of the emerging democratic society in India. Educated, nationalist Chimnabai, born in 1871, in the wake of the "Indian Mutiny" of 1857, began her marriage in purdah but broke it in 1913, and spent the rest of her life campaigning tirelessly for women's rights. The comparatively demure Sunity Devi was a favorite of the British aristocracy and made Queen Victoria the godmother of her son, Victor.