Twenty-five years earlier

Twenty-five years earlier is not merely a date recalled by the characters: it is the hinge between a royal past that seemed settled and a present still governed by its secrets. The period encompasses Rajadithyar’s military ambitions near Thirunaavalur and the report that Mandhakini died at sea, a report Aniruddhar later confesses he knowingly falsified. What was hidden then continues to shape the royal family’s grief, its understanding of kinship, and the arguments over who should inherit the Chozha throne.

A military ambition remembered at Thirunaavalur

Thirunaavalur’s temple spire calls Udayaar’s attention to a landscape layered with sacred and political memory. He identifies the place as the birthplace of Nambi Arurar, also known as Sundaramurthy, and as the site of Rajadithyar’s Chozha encampment twenty-five years earlier. In Udayaar’s account, Rajadithyar stands apart even among the heroes of myth and the warriors he has seen: his reputation rests on martial skill and a vast northern ambition.

Rajadithyar intended to invade Rettai Mandalam, destroy its capital Manyakhedam, and defeat Kannara Thevan. Udayaar connects that plan to the example of the Pallava ruler Maamallar, whose destruction of Vathapi had fired Rajadithyar’s desire to repeat the feat. The invasion was imagined both as vengeance for the enemy’s conduct and as a means of enlarging Rajadithyar’s fame. Its scale demanded preparation: whereas Maamallar was said to have spent seven years assembling forces, Rajadithyar believed three or four would suffice. The recalled encampment therefore evokes not only a place and a date but an unfinished political and military aspiration.

Mandhakini’s reported death and concealed survival

The most consequential private history attached to this period comes to light in Aniruddhar’s confession to Kundhavai. Twenty-five years earlier, Sundara Chozhar had ordered him to find Mandhakini. Aniruddhar reached Kodikkarai with several men and heard witnesses describe her diving from the lighthouse into the raging sea. Thyaga Vidanga Karaiyar had recounted the apparent death in such distress that Aniruddhar repeated the report to his friend as fact.

But Aniruddhar had seen what the witnesses’ account did not establish: the sea had not killed Mandhakini. A fisherman rescued her, and Aniruddhar recognized her in the boat when it came ashore away from Kodikkarai. He paid the fisherman an extraordinary sum to take her to Ilankai and keep her there. Returning to Thanjavur, he told Sundara Chozhar she had died. He describes the decision as a deliberate falsehood made to spare his friend pain, while acknowledging that he could not foresee its later consequences. Sundara Chozhar continued to believe Mandhakini dead and remained tormented by the loss.

The secret’s family consequences

Aniruddhar’s account also reaches beyond the night of the supposed drowning. After Sundara Chozhar went to the warfront at Madurai and Aniruddhar spent years studying sacred texts in Kasi, Aniruddhar returned and encountered Eesana Siva Battar’s father speaking intimately with Mandhakini in Pazhaiyarai. From him, Aniruddhar learned that Mandhakini had stayed for several days in Periya Piratti’s royal garden, given birth to twins, and left them there. She sometimes returned to see the children without anyone knowing. When Aniruddhar asked what had become of them, the man refused to answer, saying that the matter was Sembian Maadevi’s secret.

Aniruddhar did not press further. He suspected, however, that Mandhakini—not Mother Kaveri—had rescued the young Arulmozhi when he fell into the river. That suspicion was later confirmed when Arulmozhi met Mandhakini in Eezham and reached the same conclusion. The recollection thus changes the meaning of an old royal story: the rescue once attributed to the river’s divine intervention may instead have been an act by the woman the court believed dead. The past supplies a hidden human connection where the family’s public memory had placed a miracle.

Memory’s return and the inheritance crisis

The truth reaches Kundhavai through more than one route. She tells Aniruddhar that she learned Mandhakini was alive first through the Vaanar warrior returned from Eezham, then from Arulmozhi. Aniruddhar, by contrast, admits that he had possessed the knowledge for more than twenty-five years and had withheld it even while understanding Sundara Chozhar’s enduring anguish. Their exchange makes the passage of time itself part of the revelation: the secret survived not because it was forgotten, but because Aniruddhar chose silence.

That silence becomes harder to maintain as the emperor’s memories return. Sundara Chozhar still believes Mandhakini dead; in a night of grief and confusion, he imagines that her ghost is taking revenge on his children and fears that Arulmozhi has drowned. Unable to soothe him, Kundhavai tells him that Arulmozhi is safe in the Buddhist monastery at Nagapattinam. The account of twenty-five years earlier therefore bears directly on the family’s present emotional crisis: a false death has shaped the father’s grief, while the truth of survival and the children’s rescue remains dispersed among those who know only fragments.

The same reach of the past appears in the struggle over succession. Aditha Karikalan’s birth is remembered as having occurred twenty-four years earlier in Udayaar’s palace at Thirukkovilur, amid celebrations attended by Chozha and Thondai Mandalam rulers and their forces. His name joined the memories of Karikal Valavan and Rajadithyar. Though this is not the same date as the twenty-five-year recollections, the adjacent memories place Aditha’s identity within the dynastic history that now bears on the throne.

In the present dispute, Sundara Chozhar rejects dividing the empire and declares that he intends to crown Madhuranthakan ruler of an undivided Chozha realm. At Kadambur, Aditha says his father had publicly crowned him heir but now appears to favor Madhuranthakan. Periya Pazhuvettarayar proposes dividing the kingdom between the princes; Aditha rejects partition, recognizes that Madhuranthakan has a legitimate claim under the older line of succession, and offers to renounce his own claim. His condition is a force of three hundred thousand soldiers, supplies for a year, and three hundred ships for a northern campaign. The old military dream associated with Rajadithyar thus returns in a new form, attached to Aditha’s proposed future. Across family secrets and royal claims alike, the past is not background: it is evidence, inheritance, and an unsettled demand upon the present.