Red Fort

Akbar Shah II (r. 1806-1837) was the penultimate Mughal emperor, ruling a Delhi court stripped of real power and increasingly hemmed in by the East India Company. He tried and failed to make his favourite son, Mirza Jahangir, heir apparent in place of his eldest son, the future Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Bahadur Shah Zafar (r. 1837-1857) was the last Mughal emperor, a calligrapher and celebrated Urdu poet reigning over a Delhi court stripped of real power. Reluctantly made figurehead of the 1857 Uprising, he was tried and exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862, ending the Mughal dynasty.