King of England

The novel is based on the diary of Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador of the King of England, at the court of the Mogul Emperor Jahangir.

After a long six months, the ship of Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of the King of England, reached Surat (Indian port city) in autumn of 1615. On the orders of the East India Company he is supposed to solicit the permission for a trade privilege from the Great Mogul for English merchants. The Dutch and the Portuguese had major control of trade at that time.

Mr Roe is accompanied by a surgeon (Thomas David) as well as some employees - and Christopher, a drawer. Christopher's job was to make and bring back drawings of people, the architecture, the landscape and the vegetation in India. He dresses like locals, learns Hindustani and Persian and is not shy in any way to know India and its inhabitants. But not everyone likes him and more than once he runs into trouble.

In this scene, the author describes their journey from Surat to Agra. On the way Christopher met a family - Ramall, Sita and Amra. Finally arriving Agra, Christopher goes out with his drawing board to observe the scenes. Ramall invites Christopher to eat with them and the author describes how the Indian food is cooked and the spices used.

Christopher meets Amanda, a little girl, hiding in one of the wagons with her amma. On enquiring he comes to know that the governor wanted to marry her and McLeod, the host, was helping her in crossing to get to the other governor where she would be safe. Child marriage was a prevalent practice that time.

Then the wagon that was hiding Amanda went missing and Christopher is worried. All of them reach Ajmer and are welcomed by Edwards, and English Merchant in Ajmer

After some delay, the troop appeared in front on Janhangir. Christopher ventured out in the Ajmer city and realised that mostly people spoke Persian and Hindustani along with regional languages.

Christopher meets the Empress who promised to search the governor of Surat to find Amanda. Roe is jealous of this since he always wanted to meet the Empress, NurJahan, since she along with the brother would be instrumental in signing the trade agreement.