The American Queen India Suspected Was a Spy
She married into Sikkim royalty and fought for the region’s autonomy. Then came the allegations she was a CIA honeypot.
It was 1959. While a 36-year-old man was sitting in the Windamere Hotel lounge in Darjeeling, a 19-year-old caught his eye. This wasn’t just any man, but the Crown Prince of Sikkim, who’d become the kingdom’s last monarch. And this wasn’t just any woman; she was a Sarah Lawrence student raised by American diplomats. But love finds its way in the strangest corners, and this couple had a romance that many could only dream of. The two fell in love, got married, and Sikkim got a new queen. But others spun a different tale: this girl was a honeypot, a CIA plant.
More than six decades later, as the world can’t stop talking about NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged spy from China, Hope Cooke’s story offers some insight. The Juggernaut pored over the royals’ writings and interviews and spoke to historians to find out why this one rumor has never left the subcontinent.