The episode opens with William Dalrymple delivering a warm endorsement of the London Review of Books, describing it as the finest journal in the country and offering listeners a three-month free trial at lrb.me/trial. He frames it in terms of the deep-dive approach to history the Empire podcast champions — diary entries, diplomatic correspondence, great-thinker essays. A separate ad block follows with a BetterHelp online therapy spot citing their 2026 State of Stigma report, a pharmaceutical read for Tremfya covering Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and a general mention of the Empire Club subscription service offering ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and Discord access.

Anita Anand and William Dalrymple introduce this as the final episode in their four-part series on the Duleep Singh sisters. Anita issues a direct content warning: the episode covers suicide, severe mental illness, and the lives of young women who suffered greatly. She directs UK and Irish listeners to call the Samaritans free of charge, and acknowledges that international listeners will have their own local helplines. The tone is measured and empathetic from the outset, signalling that this will be the series' darkest chapter.

Anita and William turn at last to the two sisters whose names have been dropped throughout the series: Princess Pauline and Princess Ada Irene Beryl Duleep Singh. Their names alone tell the story — no Jindan, no Victoria, no Alexandrina, just Beryl — working-class names that confirmed their exclusion from royal society ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh were the daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and his second wife Ada Wetherall, a working-class woman Queen V…" 04:11 Play} . Their mother was Ada Wetherall, a woman William speculates worked in what Anita calls 'a knocking shop', who caught the eye of the Maharaja. Anita explains that Queen Victoria didn't just dislike Ada because of her race — this was about class. Duleep Singh had broken the code: illegitimate children were forgivable; marrying the chambermaid was not. With their father increasingly cast as an enemy of the state — lampooned in Punch dancing with a Russian bear — and their mother's status beyond the pale, Pauline and Irene had no protection and no patron.

With Bamba's first family abandoned, Duleep Singh joined Ada in Paris before heading to Moscow, convinced the Tsar would welcome him as a vital piece in the Great Game. Instead, he rotted for a year in the Hotel Bolsoy — a dilapidated boarding house — sending cartes de visite and waiting for a summons that never came ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Maharaja Duleep Singh spent a year in a run-down Moscow boarding house waiting in vain for Tsar Alexander III to champion his cause. That B…" 19:00 Play} . Anita references Christy Campbell's book 'The Maharaja's Box' as the definitive account of this period, including the British spies who picked Duleep's pockets and ensured his funds dwindled. There is even a suggestion, Anita hints, that Ada herself may have been a British spy, quietly undermining Duleep's already hopeless cause. On Boxing Day 1887, Ada gave birth to Pauline in that same boarding house — the child given the middle name Alexandrina, possibly to flatter the Tsar, possibly to hedge bets with Queen Victoria. It reads less like a loving gesture than a desperate one.

With Bamba's death clearing the way, Duleep Singh and Ada married in a small civil ceremony in April 1889, making Irene technically legitimate where Pauline was not. Irene Helen Beryl — the names are notably stripped of any royal or Punjabi resonance, suggesting a man who no longer believed in leverage or flattery. William reads the psychology of the names as a map of the Maharaja's declining aspirations. The couple drifted on, living separately for stretches, while Pauline and Irene were eventually baptised in a colonial hotel chapel in Algiers in the winter of 1892 — a far cry from Sophia's christening at Windsor with Queen Victoria as godmother. By this point, Ada had moved out of the hotel suite and into an expensive villa on the outskirts of Paris with a mysterious companion, Madame Paraton, whom British intelligence recorded as a suspected Russian agent.

The Hôtel de la Trémoille, two minutes from the Champs-Élysées, looked glamorous from the outside but inside smelled of neglect. It was here that Duleep Singh, now 55 and looking far older, died of a devastating heart attack — alone on the floor, friends long gone, family not visiting ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Duleep Singh died alone aged 55, Paris, 1893: Maharaja Duleep Singh died alone on the floor of his Paris hotel suite in October 1893, aged …" 20:00 Play} . Ada and the girls were living at the villa with Madame Paraton. The last time Irene saw her father she was 3; the last time Pauline saw him she was 5. The India Office eventually stepped in to settle approximately £22,000 on each of his five daughters, though official documents always referred to Pauline and Irene coldly as 'the two of the second family', never by name.

The death of Duleep Singh left Pauline and Irene without support from virtually every quarter — except two. Frederick Duleep Singh, the antiquarian bachelor living quietly at Blow Norton in Norfolk and collecting Jacobite art, opened his home without condition to both girls ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Frederick Duleep Singh, the antiquarian Norfolk bachelor who collected Jacobite art, was the one member of the first family who opened his …" 22:55 Play} . Sophia, too, acted as ambassador, welcoming them to Faraday House and even ensuring a photograph of Sophia, Ada, Pauline, and Irene was taken together. William remarks that Freddie's generosity stands out as one of the few genuinely decent acts in this story — always trust an antiquarian, he says, especially a Norfolk one. Freddie sometimes sent money to Ada anonymously, and his home at Blow Norton had adjoining coach houses prepared so the sisters could come and go as they pleased.

Pauline was the more gregarious and photogenic of the two sisters, and by 1911 she had become glamorous enough to appear on the cover of Country Life in an Edwardian ball gown on a chaise longue ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Pauline Duleep Singh appeared on the cover of Country Life in 1911, styled as 'Princess Pauline' in a ball gown. But for those who knew her…" 24:15 Play} . For upper-middle-class England, it was impressive. But as Anita notes, the title 'Princess Pauline' carried a knowing snigger for anyone aware of her mother's background. Before that, Sophia had tried to bring Pauline into the fold, inviting her to Lahore in 1907 to meet Bamba. It was a disaster: Pauline arrived with enough luggage for twenty years and within six weeks the trip was over, with Bamba telling her exactly what kind of woman her mother was and attributing all of Pauline's flaws to Ada. Sophia's diaries record that Pauline was also difficult — late out of bed, flirtatious, rude — but Anita notes that any 19-year-old in a hostile environment might behave similarly.

In 1914, on the eve of the war, Pauline found love with a young army officer, Second Lieutenant John Shirley Archibald Torrie of the Rifle Brigade ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Pauline widowed at 27, Battle of Loos: Pauline Duleep Singh married army officer John Torrie in 1914 but was widowed just a year later when…" 28:06 Play} . He was exactly the kind of upper-middle-class Englishman whose family would have read Country Life. A year later, he was dead — killed at the Battle of Loos, one of the most catastrophic engagements of the entire war. Anita explains that the battle's horror stemmed largely from Germany releasing chlorine gas from cylinders, only for the wind to blow it back into British trenches, killing approximately 60,000 men in four days. Pauline, married at 25, was a widow at 27. She never remarried — the depth of her feeling for Torrie visible only in its absence, in the fact that she would not try again.

The war reshuffled every sister's allegiances: Sophia nursed, Bamba quietly willed Britain to lose from India, Catherine sided with Germany. Ada, nobody's idea of an altruist, volunteered for the French Red Cross ambulance corps and tended the wounded at Verdun — one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the entire war ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Ada volunteered for French Red Cross at Verdun: Ada Duleep Singh, formerly suspected of being a British spy and a habitual gambler, volunte…" 29:30 Play} . That she did this from a position of Monte Carlo gambling habits and expensive Parisian villa life makes it all the more striking. When Ada returned to London in 1919, she had run up debts of over £17,000 and nowhere to live. Frederick again provided anonymous support. Then Ada marched into the India Office herself and offered them a deal: give me a small house and a hat shop and I will never bother you again. They accepted. The correspondence survives. Anita relishes it: she goes from a knocking shop to Verdun to millinery, and somehow makes it work.

The mid-episode ad break features three sponsored segments. First, Rest Is Science hosts Michael and Hannah present a Cancer Research UK segment on CAR T-cell immunotherapy — describing how T-cells can be reprogrammed to target blood cancers and are being developed for solid tumours too, with Cancer Research UK credited for helping double cancer survival over 50 years. Next, Sallie Mae promotes its scholarship and loan tools for college-bound students. Finally, a standalone narrator reads for Peyronie's disease awareness campaign talkaboutpd.com, describing symptoms, causes, and treatment options.

Irene, the more fragile of the two second-family sisters, sought her own family early: she married wealthy Frenchman Pierre Vilmont at a Paris society wedding on 15 March 1910, photographed by elite society photographers Ellison and Whalery in full bridal regalia ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Irene Duleep Singh began having epileptic fits by 1915 and spent time in nursing homes being treated for 'neurasthenia' — the Victorian cat…" 36:45 Play} . But happiness proved elusive. Records show epileptic fits as early as 1915, and within a decade she was in nursing homes being treated for neurasthenia — the Edwardian catch-all for severe depression and anxiety, treated at the time with electroshock therapy. William notes that his own grandfather received the same treatment and was scarred by it for life. When Irene moved back to Paris, she was returning to the city where her father had died, where her mother had ignored her, where her worst memories were rooted. She painted, she read, she kept a childhood music scorebook — she fought hard. But as Anita says: there just weren't the tools.

By 1925 Vilmont had separated from Irene, and she had thrown herself from a top-floor window — surviving, but with her body broken and the French press descending with headlines about 'la princesse indienne suicidaire'. Then, in 1926, Frederick Duleep Singh died ^{[1] — Anita Anand "Frederick Duleep Singh, the antiquarian Norfolk bachelor who collected Jacobite art, was the one member of the first family who opened his …" 22:55 Play} . He was not old — his father had died at 55, and Freddie too had heart problems — but his death removed the one person who had held together whatever fragile bonds existed between the two families. At his funeral at St Andrew's Church in Blow Norton, the other four sisters gathered for the last time, but Irene was absent: she was on the Riviera, gambling away the last of her money, convinced she was losing her mind. Pauline came and stood at the grave beside Bamba, the woman she most detested. Irene could not. As Anita puts it: who could not have affection for Freddie?

Two months after Freddie's funeral, Sophia received a telegram: a fisherman had pulled a woman's body from the Riviera. Irene had left two notes — one on a nearby rock identifying herself, one addressed to her lawyer Lancelot Smith, written on the morning of her death ^{[1] — Irene Duleep Singh "Nobody will ever hear of me again, as I am going to commit suicide this afternoon. I am homeless. My nerves have prevented me continuing my…" 44:20 Play} . Anita reads the letter in full, and it is devastating in its plainness: Irene writes that her nerves have prevented her studies, that she has been at Monte Carlo playing the fool and losing pocket money, and that she is 'homeless'. She apologises for troubling him. 'It is the last time. I am homeless.' William notes the brutal irony: at the time of writing, Irene had an estate worth approximately £30,000. She was not materially destitute. She was homeless in spirit — and no one had caught her.

On the morning of her death, Irene changed her will, cutting out Pauline and leaving everything to Dr. Barnardo's Homes for Poor and Unwanted Children ^{[1] — Anita Anand "When Irene's will left everything to Dr. Barnardo's, Pauline contested it, claiming Irene was not of sound mind. Then Bamba intervened — hi…" 48:00 Play} . Anita calls it the clearest possible message: I was unloved, I was unwanted too. Pauline contested the will on the grounds that Irene was not of sound mind. Then, out of nowhere, Bamba intervened — hiring Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, a feared King's Counsel, baronet, and Conservative MP, described by Anita as an absolute Rottweiler. For days in court, Hume-Williams dismantled Irene's reputation: 'Black blood ran in her veins, and she would scratch to get it out.' The self-harming, the skin conditions, the hair-pulling — all were laid bare publicly, to Anita's visible revulsion. Bamba lost. Not only did she receive nothing, she was ordered to pay all court costs. She and Pauline never spoke again. The only time Pauline and Sophia would meet again was at Ada's funeral in 1930.

After the legal battle, Pauline simply disappeared. Lurid theories circulated: killed in a bombing raid, a concentration camp, a collaborator, a Resistance fighter. A 1950s historian asked Bamba what had happened to Pauline; she barked that she didn't know and didn't care. Then, years later, historian Peter Bunce received an email from a distant relative of John Torrie, Pauline's dead husband. The relative had been researching his family tree and found a French burial record: a foreign woman, 1941, in the foothills of the Pyrenees at the Sanatorium de Trespuy ^{[1] — Anita Anand "For decades, no one knew what happened to Pauline after she vanished following the will case. Historian Peter Bunce traced her through a di…" 51:00 Play} . Bunce spent months pursuing it and recovered both Pauline's death certificate and her last will. It said simply: death report of a foreign subject in France. She had developed tuberculosis in the late 1930s and had not told her sisters — not Sophia, not anyone. She died on 10 April 1941, aged 53, buried by French authorities with no mourners and no word sent. Like her father before her.

Looking back across the series, Anita and William reflect on what the story of the Duleep Singh daughters means in aggregate. The most striking fact: not one of Duleep Singh's children — from either family — had children of their own. Victor died young in Monte Carlo. Freddie was an avowed bachelor. Sophia had purpose but no children. Catherine had love and later a mission as the so-called 'Indian Schindler'. Pauline and Irene simply evaporated ^{[1] — Anita Anand "None of Duleep Singh's children had children: None of Maharaja Duleep Singh's children from either his first or second family produced chil…" 53:50 Play} . Anita reflects that if she had pitched this story as a Bridgerton series, she would have been told to make it more believable: too many catastrophes to one family. William notes that although these figures are now celebrated as mascots for the British Sikh community — blue plaques, exhibitions at Kensington Palace — none of them actually embraced their Sikh identity by the end of their lives. They were all Christians when they died, products of a father who converted back to Sikhism too late and estrangement from any sustaining religious community. The line of the Lion of Punjab ended not with a bang but with a series of lonely, untended deaths across Europe.

Anita and William exchange brief, wry goodbyes — William notes that Anita has 'really cheered us up' — before signing off the series. A final ad break follows, with a narrator promoting HomeServe's home repair plans as an alternative to standard homeowner's insurance for unexpected pipe bursts, water heater failures, and AC breakdowns. Listeners are directed to homeserve.com/podcast for 50% off their first year. The episode and series conclude.