Regular readers will remember me raving about historical fiction and in particular, a set of books about the women of the Mughal empire. I’ve been a long time fan of Indu Sunderesan and her books about the inner lives of the Mughals.
I like the detail she puts into things, imagining the kings we’ve read about as husbands and fathers and lovers. And of course, the amount of research that goes into historical fiction is epic, so it’s nice to imagine the young Noor Jahan for example, as very pretty and determined, the young Shah Jahan catching the eye of the girl who would grow up to be Mumtaz Mahal, the relationship between Noor Jahan and her first husband, all that.
And so I was delighted to see that she had come out with a new book in her Mughal series, this time skipping right over one generation (we left off at Jehangir’s rule) and going straight to the life of Shah Jahan’s oldest daughter, Jahanara, forced to take over the role as the chief woman in the zenana after her mother died giving birth to her 14th child. Shah Jahan had what some called an unnatural dependence on this child, but I was glad to see Sunderesan dismissed them as just rumours, and only played on the fact that the king, bereaved, leant heavily on his child. But the downside to this dependence was that Jahanara never got to have a life of her own. Her brothers (the now infamous Aurangzeb included) all got married off and given land, but her and her sister, Roshanara, were condemned to stay in the palace and take care of their father forever.
The Shadow Princess is that sort of book, where you realise maybe being royalty isn’t all it’s cut out to be, that responsibility can come in the way of having a life, and even royalty needs a life, after all. It speaks of the repurcussions of Mumtaz Mahal’s death on not just her husband, but also her children. It made me want to go to Agra again (and it’s amazing how many people in India have never been to the Taj Mahal) to see these lives up close. I think you should do the same.
The writer is an author