[3] Although a colonel in the Presidency armies, Kirkpatrick wore Mughal-style clothing at home, smoked a hookah, chewed betelnut, enjoyed nautch parties, and maintained a small harem in his zenanakhana.

Born in India, Kirkpatrick was educated in Britain, spoke Tamil as his first language, wrote poetry in Urdu, and added Persian and Hindustani to his "linguistic armoury".

Kirkpatrick was adopted by the Nizam of Hyderabad, who invested him with many titles: mutamin ul mulk ('Safeguard of the kingdom'), hushmat jung ('Valiant in battle'), nawab fakhr-ud-dowlah bahadur ('Governor, pride of the state, and hero').

[9] "Hashmat Jang was believed by some of his Muslim staff and by the bride's female relations to secretly embraced Islam before a Shi'a Mujtahid (cleric); he is said to have presented a certificate from him to Khair-un-Nissa Begum, who sent it to her mother."

After what Russell appears to have regarded as a brief fling, he abandoned Khair-un-Nissa who, with her reputation now ruined, was unable to prevent greedy relatives from taking over the valuable landed estates she had inherited from her father.

Their father had sent them to England to live with their grandfather Colonel James Kirkpatrick, in London and Keston, Kent, shortly before his own, unexpected death at a young age.

Kitty was for a few years the love interest of the Scottish writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, then a young man of no fortune working as a tutor and an ineligible match for an heiress.