Nesbit studied his glass, trying to retrieve the conversation’s thread before Holmes had diverted us into sport. “Yes, well, the maharaja of Khanpur. He is as near to what the Americans might call a ‘self-made man’ as an hereditary ruler can get. You no doubt realise that the hundreds of native states within India have huge differences. One state has a population of less than two hundred in under an acre; on the other hand, Kashmir occupies an area larger than France, while Hyderabad possesses an income greater than most of the European countries. Some are one step from feudal barbarism, in their society and their economy, others well on their way to becoming industrial powers; it’s entirely up to each state’s prince. The British Resident may suggest and recommend, but he rarely asserts any authority. It’s the price we pay for their loyalty—the princes saved us in the Mutiny. Indeed, one might even say that they made the Empire possible. They are still essential to British rule, a guarantee that if the tide turns against us again, we have a bulwark against the waves. If you will pardon the flight of fancy,” he added.

“The princes are, to put it bluntly, above the law of British India. Short of declaring war or entering into independent diplomatic relations, they are free to do as they like, to spend their time and their fortunes gambling in Monte Carlo or hunting tigers or filling their days with dancing girls. Only if they become too wildly erratic, or too political, do we step in. But their sins have to be pretty extreme.”

I kept my face expressionless, but all in all, it sounded as if British India had managed to preserve and encourage all that was bad about an hereditary aristocracy, buying the princes off by averting eyes from their misdemeanors while heaping them with ritual displays of power—the big shooting parties, the nine- or seventeen- or twenty-one-gun salutes—in hopes that they might not notice their essential impotence.