India's Princely states covered nearly 40% of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. It focuses on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, and offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the relationship of king and subject in South Asia. Using a combination of historical and anthropological methodologies and based upon substantial archival and field research, the author argues that the idea of kingship lived on in South India and continues to play a vital and important role in contemporary South Indian social and political life.