Due to his relationship with Raskapoor, a tawaif or courtesan who is the daughter of a Muslim mother and a Brahmin father, Maharaja Sawai Jagat is despised by the other monarchs of Jaipur. The Maharaja went against all convention and gave her the title of "Half Empress." Raskapoor skillfully manoeuvred her way through the royal life's maze despite having little expertise. But when she was up against a band of spies and faced with a deceitful environment, she ultimately fell for their trap and was imprisoned. There are several accounts of how her life ended, including that the sympathetic prison warden helped her to escape and that she threw herself onto Jagat Singh's funeral pyre. But now, the guides who frequently bring her up are the ones who best remember her as a celebrity prisoner at the famous Nahargarh Fort. In her historical novel The Half Empress, Tripti Pandey transports the reader to the royal corridors of nineteenth-century Jaipur and brings to life the story of a formidable woman who has been deliberately omitted from history.