The Queen Who Chose the Dark — Part I

I remember the scent of sandalwood that morning in Gandhara — faint, deliberate, the fragrance our women used before dawn prayers. Outside, the court murmured with talk of Bhishma’s arrival from Hastināpura.

In those days, Gandhāra was a small border kingdom — between the Kurus of the plains and the western realms of Madra, Bāhlika, Sindhu, and Kamboja — a frontier that often bent before power but preserved its pride in wisdom and diplomacy. My father, King Subala, had ruled long enough to know that pride alone cannot guard borders. Bhishma’s proposal — that I be wed to the blind prince Dhritarashtra — carried the weight of a command more than a request.

Shakuni, my brother, raged. His love for me was fierce, and his sense of insult fiercer. But he, too, saw the truth in our father’s silence. To refuse would invite ruin; to accept, at least, preserved Gandhāra. When the decision was made, I felt no anger. Only a stillness, as if my life had suddenly stepped out of its own light.

That was the morning I took a strip of cloth and wrapped it across my eyes. No one asked me to. It was my own choice — an act meant to match my husband’s darkness, to share his world and protest my fate at once. The cloth was cool when it touched my skin; I remember the faint rustle as it fell into place. I had thought I was closing my eyes; I did not know I was opening another kind of vision.

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In Hastināpura, I learnt that sight is not only with the eyes. I heard more than others saw — the movement of silk in corridors, the sound of courtiers breathing differently when Bhishma entered. Dhritarashtra’s voice was measured, his ambition covert. I was his queen and his equal in darkness, yet in council he depended on others — Vidura’s prudence, Bhishma’s authority, the memory of his younger brother, Pāṇḍu. But the final word was his, guided less by wisdom than by the quiet envy he bore for a brother who had once ruled and won hearts.

When Pāṇḍu ruled, the court breathed differently — a reign of conquests, hunts, and decrees. While Bhīṣma and the elders rejoiced, Dhṛtarāṣṭra kept a heavy silence. Yet I could sense the unease beneath that stillness.

I had conceived long before Kunti, but the child did not come. Days turned to months, months to years. When word reached me that Kuntī had borne Yudhiṣṭhira, something twisted within. In despair I struck my own womb, and what emerged was a hard, lifeless mass. Vyāsa’s words gave it form — a hundred sons and one daughter, born of jars and patience. Yet from the first cry of Duryodhana, I felt a tremor in the air, as though joy had entered with a shadow.

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My sons grew under Shakuni’s care. He had come to stay, saying Gandhāra was too far to watch its grandchildren. His devotion to me was unquestioned, but his heart was still sore from that old humiliation. He shaped my sons’ minds with stories of wrongs done and rights to reclaim. Duryodhana listened; his affection for me was real, but pride had already become his teacher. Counsel slid off him like water off polished stone.

When the talk of sending the sons of Pāṇḍu to Vāraṇāvata arose, Vidura spoke, calm and precise. His words carried warning, but they were brushed aside as overcaution. I heard the unease in his tone, but my sons and their uncle laughed it away. In those days, even wisdom was treated as disloyalty. I learnt to weigh my words, for a mother’s voice can be drowned by a son’s ambition.

The house of wax was built, and the Pāṇḍavas were sent. When the fire came and the news of their death spread, I felt neither triumph nor grief — only silence. Later, when whispers said they had escaped, I began to fear the shape my sons’ triumphs might take.

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When news spread that the sons of Pāṇḍu had survived the fire and taken Draupadī’s hand, I knew our peace was over. Her swayamvara had turned fortune’s wheel again — for in that alliance, they gained both power and purpose. The Yādavas stood with them, and so did the kings of Pañchāla. What my sons had meant as an ending had become a beginning.

At Bhīṣma’s urging, Dhṛtarāṣṭra recalled them and granted them a share of the kingdom — the wild stretch of Khaṇḍavaprastha. They built Indraprastha upon that barren soil; I heard tales of its halls shining brighter than Hastināpura itself. Duryodhana went once to see it, and came back burning with envy.

Every misfortune we sent them only strengthened them. When Arjuna went into exile for breaking the vow of their shared marriage, he returned with weapons, boons, and alliances that fate would later summon to Kurukṣetra. It seemed the gods themselves turned each punishment into preparation.

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The dice followed. I had known of the game, but not how far it would go. When the hall echoed with Draupadī’s cries, even Dhṛtarāṣṭra stirred from his stillness. For a moment, the blindness that bound us both seemed to lift. He spoke — not as a king, but as a father — and returned all that had been lost.

For a few days, there was uneasy calm. One might have thought that shame would heal what pride had broken. But nothing had changed. My sons showed no remorse. Krishna’s presence, the elders’ censure — nothing touched them. Their pride had only deepened, their cunning grown more careful. They learned to bow in public and conspire in silence.

When the second game was called, I no longer tried to reason with them. Kuntī did not follow her sons, she stayed behind. She came to see me often — her words few, her composure complete. Between us, there was no judgement, only a quiet knowing that what had been set in motion could no longer be turned back.

My sons’ plan of sending the Pāṇḍavas into exile was to remove them from power, yet it became their making. In the forests, the sons of Pāṇḍu found allies, wisdom, and strength — as though fate itself conspired to prepare them.

While Kuntī and I waited for the thirteen years to end, my sons plotted to find the Pāṇḍavas during their concealment in Virāṭa’s kingdom — so that exile might begin anew.