Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
“Steal the throne,” his dying brother commands him.
Krishnadeva has no wish to be emperor. The rightful heir, his nephew, is a child, and the crown pressed on him carries an accusation. If he takes it, he may save Vijayanagara from regency, rebellion, and dismemberment. Yet if he takes it, he also becomes the man who stole a boy’s inheritance.
He accepts with a private vow. Guardian, not thief.
Timmarasu, the statesman who has been teacher and father to him, teaches him how power is wielded. But it is Chinnamma, his second wife, who names the harder test. A low-caste temple dancer with no rank and no protector, she knows what power looks like from below. How a king treats the powerless, she tells him, measures his right to rule more truly than any throne. The question the court asks of his reign, she asks of the man.
War will test his courage. Court intrigue will test his judgment. Governance will test something harder. Whether legitimacy can be earned after power has been taken.
The Lion Throne follows the making of Krishnadevaraya, warrior, reformer, and poet, and the question that shadows his rise. Can a ruler become worthy of a throne that was never unquestionably his?
The author: Buchi Ramagopal