Indian mythology · servant · poisonous counsel
Kaikeyi's hunchbacked maid, whose whispered fears, planted the night before Rama's coronation, turned a queen's love to panic and set the entire epic in motion. Literature's case study in the power of a counselor.
On the eve of Rama's coronation, Manthara's whispers turn Kaikeyi's love to fear, and two old boons undo a kingdom: her son crowned, Rama banished fourteen years. Rama accepts without bitterness, Sita and Lakshmana follow him into the forest, and Dasharatha dies of grief.