Zodanga is a walled Martian capital and the seat of a kingdom at war with Helium. Its grand royal center, extensive defenses, and formidable armed forces make it the prize of a large-scale invasion; yet the campaign is politically unpopular at home, and the city’s fall turns a dynastic coercion into the opening for Helium’s relief. The city’s palace is where John Carter interrupts the proposed marriage of Dejah Thoris to Sab Than, and its captured ships carry the victorious coalition onward to Helium.

Capital and Political Setting

Zodanga’s public heart is a central plaza covering a square mile, bounded by the palaces of its jeddak, jeds, and other members of the royal and noble families, as well as by public buildings, cafes, and shops. The setting joins government, aristocratic residence, and civic life in one vast urban space. The plaza’s lawns and scarlet vegetation frame the city as splendid and carefully ordered, while its scale also makes visible the concentration of royal power.

The city’s defenses reflect a society shaped by fear of assassination. Zodanga is surrounded by a great wall, and its inhabitants raise their metal-column residences high above the ground at night or in dangerous times. Shops, by contrast, generally stand at ground level and are left unbarred because theft is rare; it is personal violence, not ordinary property crime, that governs the architecture of precaution. Carter enters the city with a letter from the Ptor brothers, then crosses the plaza and recognizes Kantos Kan, who has been working undercover to locate Dejah Thoris.

Zodanga’s conflict with Helium is not presented as a simple contest between two equally supported national causes. A Zodangan nobleman who has served on a diplomatic mission speaks regretfully of the conditions keeping the countries at war. He condemns the ruler’s attack on Helium’s disabled returning fleet as a grave blunder and reports that the Zodangan people disapprove of the war because it lacks right or justice. Zodanga had taken advantage of Helium’s principal fleet being away in search of its missing princess, and its armies had consequently placed Helium under siege. The nobleman’s account sets the city’s military success against its weakening political legitimacy.

The Princess and the Palace

Dejah Thoris’s disappearance is bound up with Zodanga’s war aims and its royal succession. Kantos Kan tells Carter that Sab Than, prince of Zodanga, has Dejah Thoris concealed in the city and has fallen in love with her. Than Kosis, the jeddak, has made her voluntary marriage to his son the price of peace. Tardos Mors refuses the demand, declaring that Helium would rather face the death of its princess than see her marry anyone other than the person of her own choice. The proposed marriage is thus not merely private courtship: it is a political condition imposed on a besieged enemy, rejected by Helium’s ruler even at the risk of destruction.

Carter first hears a different, uncertain account of the princess’s fate. A Zodangan nobleman reports that a captured green warrior said Dejah Thoris escaped from the Tharks with a strange creature from another world, only to fall into the hands of the Warhoons; wandering thoats and traces of a bloody conflict had been found nearby. The report leads the nobleman to conclude that she is dead, but Carter recognizes that the evidence is inconclusive and resolves to reach Helium with whatever information he can give Tardos Mors. Once in Zodanga, he learns from Kantos Kan that she is alive and imprisoned there. Rumor, incomplete evidence, and direct knowledge therefore successively reshape the city’s importance in Carter’s search.

Carter’s intervention takes place during a formal palace ceremony. From his concealed position, he sees two figures wrapped in scarlet silk brought before Than Kosis. When the veils are removed, one is Sab Than and the other is Dejah Thoris; the golden ornaments and collar make clear that the ceremony is about to bind her to the Zodangan prince. Carter smashes the great window with the hilt of his long-sword, leaps into the assembly, and strikes the golden chain that would have joined them. The palace turns in an instant from a stage for royal authority into the scene of an armed interruption.

Sab Than attacks Carter with a jeweled dagger drawn from his nuptial ornaments. Carter could kill him, but the customary prohibition against killing a member of the opposite sex restrains him: he catches Sab Than’s wrist and holds him rather than dealing a fatal blow. This moment makes the palace confrontation more than a rescue by force. Even amid the threatened marriage and the swords raised around him, Carter’s action is limited by a rule that governs violence, and he uses the captured prince to direct attention toward the news that Zodanga has fallen.

Invasion and Fall

The assault begins with a coalition assembled under Tars Tarkas. In three days he raises a force of one hundred thousand Tharks by promising the loot of Zodanga; the expedition then gains another fifty thousand warriors from various hordes while moving toward the city. The march is conducted at night, with the force sheltering by day in deserted cities. Ten days after setting out, the army halts at midnight outside Zodanga, now one hundred and fifty thousand strong. The city’s conquest is therefore not the work of a single raid but of a rapidly gathered army whose participation is encouraged by the prospect of plunder.

Carter leads a small detachment into the city ahead of the general attack. Using ten warriors to form a human staircase, he climbs the outer wall, lowers joined lengths of leather over the far side, and drops to the pavement. He has learned from Kantos Kan how to open the gates. Once twenty fighting men are inside, Carter discovers that he has entered at the lower boundary of the palace grounds. He decides to send one detachment toward the palace while the main body attacks the soldiers’ barracks, dispatching a messenger to Tars Tarkas for fifty more warriors. The plan depends on quiet entry: no shots are to be fired, and the general advance must wait until Carter reaches the palace. The sentries and gate guards are killed silently, and the coordinated entry succeeds.

The scale of Zodanga’s forces is made explicit during the later battle outside Helium. The Zodangans number nearly a million fighting men, while fewer than one hundred thousand green warriors oppose them, and Helium’s forces have not yet arrived. When the Helium reinforcements finally appear at noon, Tars Tarkas orders another charge. His mounted warriors strike the Zodangan ramparts as Helium’s battle line surges over the opposite defenses, crushing the Zodangans between the two forces. The defenders fight fiercely, but the plain becomes a slaughter ground before the last Zodangan surrenders.

Defeat and Aftermath

Zodanga’s complete reduction is reported by Tars Tarkas and Kantos Kan: its forces have been destroyed or captured, and no further resistance is expected from within the city. Some battleships escape, but thousands of warships and merchant vessels are held under guard by Thark warriors. The result is both military defeat and the seizure of transport on a scale that changes the victors’ immediate options.

The victorious coalition cannot simply remain in Zodanga to enjoy its conquest. The lesser hordes have begun looting and quarrelling among themselves, so the leaders gather the warriors they can control, place Zodangan prisoners aboard ships, and hurry toward Helium. Five hours later, they depart from the roofs of the dock buildings in a fleet of two hundred and fifty battleships carrying nearly one hundred thousand green warriors, followed by transports for their thoats. Zodanga’s capture thus supplies the means for the next campaign even as the disorder among its conquerors makes delay dangerous.

The city’s fall also completes the political reversal announced in the palace. The Zodangan ruler’s attempt to secure peace through Dejah Thoris’s marriage fails; the force that held her is defeated, and the fleet taken in Zodanga carries the coalition into the battle that relieves Helium. When the surviving defenders at Helium surrender, Carter and his allies enter the city in a triumphal procession. Zodanga’s narrative role is consequently double: its palace concentrates the personal stakes of coercion and rescue, while its conquest turns an unpopular war into the material and military route to Helium’s deliverance.