From Commoner To King

This is the first detailed study of the late medieval and early modern King and Commoner literature: a tradition whose cultural influence extends from Robin Hood to Shakespearean drama. This book explores the morphing political character of these tales of disguised kings and disgruntled, poaching commoners, amid carnivalesque feasts and anti-nob

King and Commoner tales were hugely popular across the late medieval and early modern periods, their cultural influence extending from Robin Hood ballads to Shakespearean national histories. This study represents the first detailed exploration of this rich and fascinating literary tradition, tracing its development across deeply politicized fifteenth-century comic tales and early modern ballads. The medieval King and Commoner tales depict an incognito king becoming lost in the forest and encountering a disgruntled commoner who complains of class oppression and poaches the king’s deer. This is an upside-down world of tricksters, violence, and politicized feasting that critiques and deconstructs medieval hierarchy. The commoners of these tales utilize the inversion of the medieval carnival, crowning themselves as liminal mock kings in the forest while threatening to rend and devour a body politic that would oppress them. These tales are complex and ambiguous, reimagining the socio-political upheaval of the late medieval period in sophisticated ruminations on class relations. By contrast, the early modern ballads and chapbooks see the tradition undergo a conservative metamorphosis. Suppressing its more radical elements amid a celebration of proto-panoptical kings, the tradition remerges as royalist propaganda in which the king watches his thankful subjects through the keyhole.

Circa 800 BC: Merit or birth? Meritocracy or dynastic monarchy? King Sarthak of the mighty kingdom of Manukeshwar faces this great dilemma in naming his successor. The contenders to the throne are the upright and virtuous Kanishka, son of a learned Rishi, and his own firstborn, the selfish and arrogant Prince Jaivant. Breaking centuries of oppressive tradition, the King names the valorous commoner as heir. Humiliated and aggrieved, Jaivant bides his time. Using age-old deceit and treachery, he succeeds in usurping the throne. But he does not anticipate the resolve of the ascetic warrior. The stage is set for a mighty struggle. Through an interlinked web of events and emotion, through love, envy, deceit and romance, the book tells the story of a crusade to restore dharma in a kingdom afflicted by despotic dynastic rule. Sattva Rajas Tamas is the story of powerful opposing forces. It is also the tale of a man’s remarkable resolve to keep fighting for truth and justice, to never give up. The ancient tale has disconcerting parallels in our modern times. Though the times have changed, the conflict between dharma and adharma has not.