She wasn’t allowed to see her own father, and died at 22

Princess Victoria Gowramma of Coorg was raised at the heart of the British royal family, baptised in Queen Victoria’s private chapel at Buckingham Palace in 1852 with the Queen herself standing as godmother. But her own father, once the ruler of an Indian kingdom, was kept away from her.

Gowramma’s father, Chikka Veerarajendra, the last Raja of Kodagu, had been deposed by the British in 1834 and held as a political prisoner in Benaras for 14 years. In 1852, he brought his 11-year-old daughter to London to secure her a safe, Christian future, and the two became the first Indian royals to set foot in England. But according to historians, the princess was later barred from meeting her own father by the Queen, who claimed he would ‘corrupt’ her with his ‘native, heathen influence.’

Gowramma grew up under the care of Major and Mrs Drummond, an army couple who educated her in Western ideologies. She was described as elegant, jovial and doted upon by the Queen, yet despite her closeness to the royal family, she and other adopted godchildren of colour lived as outsiders within it.

Her adult life brought further struggle: a marriage to army colonel John Campbell that collapsed amid his gambling and interest in her wealth, and single motherhood after the birth of her daughter, Edith, in 1861. Gowramma died of tuberculosis in 1864, a few months short of her 23rd birthday.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Roger Fenton