The ruling family were Rajputs of the Bundela clan; they descended from a younger son of a former raja of Orchha.

There is a fort palace at Datia, the architecture of which is chiefly Indo-Islamic which partly inspired the chief architect Edward Lutyens, while designing New Delhi.

It lay in the extreme north-west of Bundelkhand, near Gwalior, and was surrounded on all sides by other princely states of Central India, except on the east where it bordered upon the United Provinces.

[1] It was second highest in the rank of all the Bundela states after Orchha, with a 15-gun salute, and its Maharajas bore the hereditary title of Second of the Princes of Bundelkhand.

According to the 2011 census Datia District has a population of 786,754[5] roughly equal to the nation of Comoros[6] or the US state of South Dakota.