KARNA. His origin story, and abandonment by his mother because he’s kind of an illegitimate son, is told here. It kind of makes me want to do a story inspired by Karna himself: the dark-edged, bitter-smiled fighter who seemingly came from nowhere but plays at the level of princes, and is eventually revealed to be a bastard prince himself. Realistically, it would probably be better suited for a longer work, but I love Karna to death, and I had to at least option it.
“The curse that had haunted Constantinople for generations had come to visit Pandu at last.”
Out of the five Pandus, I found Bhima the most interesting, so I found the description of Kunti meeting his godly father really interesting: Bhima is born out of Vayu’s “stormy embrace.” It’s pretty fitting that this stormy son is born from his father the wind god’s equally turbulent hug, and that he’s born with the wind’s strength and speed. Who knows—a story about a stormy son could be pretty fun to write, too.
The story of the blind king’s sons is really interesting here, too, delved into with more depth than the other reading I’d done. Here, the queen gives birth to a lifeless lump of flesh instead of an actual human; she’s disgusted and upset, because she had been promised a blessing of a hundred sons. V returned to keep his promise, though, and had the flesh divided into a hundred parts, each of those parts cast into a pot of oil; when the queen took them out of the pots, they were human babies. This detail has a sort of clone army/fantasy Dr. Frankenstein feel to it that I love, and it could be pretty interesting to look at what it’s like to either be or be surrounded by that miraculous, terrible army of sons.
Not to mention the fact that all sorts of terrible omens went down while the flesh lumps were cooking into babies in their pots, which the royal couple couldn’t see, being blind and all. (There’s an interesting idea: the royal family of a kingdom becoming blind once they ascend to the throne, trading physical sight for something a little more otherworldly; knowing you’ll have to be next in line to sacrifice your vision someday.)
Or the fact that the delighted mother held up her firstborn son from his pot—but because she was blind, she couldn’t see what everyone else saw: that there was something terrible about him, even demonic. “They were sons who could only be loved by a blind father, and a mother who had forsaken sight.” Yes, please. Sign me the heck up.
It also makes sense that the Pandavas and their cousins would be automatically, naturally opposed, if the Pandavas are golden demigods, more than human and loved by everyone, while the cousins are feared and slightly demonic and less-than-human to everyone.
I also appreciate that D’s anger and life quest against his cousins is more motivated here, and he’s depicted as more of a person than just a black-and-white villain. He hated his cousins because they swept in and everyone treated them like heroes where they’d treated D and his brothers with fear and suspicion, and his own uncle came to him as a mentor and warned that he’d need to wipe out the Pandavas or they would take everything from him. It goes back to that old saying—“Every villain is a hero in his own mind”—and I love getting to see his POV here.
Bibliography: Epified: The Mahabharata, by Epified TV. Source: YouTube.
Image Credit: Blindfolded by Hair, by Anemone123. Source: Pixabay.
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