In 'Maharanis' Lucy Moore brilliantly recreates the lives of four women: two grandmothers, a daughter and a granddaughter, who defied tradition and whose lives encapsulated the real story of India during the heights and the eventual decline of the British Empire and the first decades of independence.
Chimnabai, Maharani of the powerful and anti-British Baroda; Sunity, who came from a liberal family, who married to the Anglophile Raja of Cooch Behar; Indira, Chimnabai's daughter who defied her parents wishes and, passionately in love, eloped with Sunity's son; and their daughter Ayesha who would marry the glamorous, polo playing Maharaja of Jaipur but make her name as a defender of the poor and critic of the corrupt government of Indira Gandhi.
Through their story the real story of India's long road to freedom and the rise and fall of the royal families is revealed. It is a beguiling story of excess, passion, defiance, of true love and arranged marriages, Empire and Independence.
