Kaikeyi

by Vaishnavi Patel

“What are you doing up?” I retorted, not wanting to admit I had been coming to get him.

although I quickly regretted the boring treatise I had picked, I basked in the closeness to my mother.

a very innocent moving way to talk about missing her mother and wanting to impress her

Nobody else had thought about whether I might be lonely, a girl in a family of men.

Punch lands

And standing there, I knew that I would never truly grow accustomed

I did love this moment. It is emotional heavy feeling. Reminds me of Marie Lu's Kingdom of Bach/ Sangu Mandanna's House of Rage and Sorrow here.

“You sold me for what? A few peaceful months with Father?”

I would never have ridden off to battle or saved the king, and Kosala would have fallen,

an opener I think maybe to part II. It's looking back / oral style of someone telling story. She redraws line back to og stories. She also does this to close parts. So not to veer so much away og text. It also helps to address differences in her retelling.

“Will you tell your advisors the truth?” “Do you want me to?” he

The first bonding moment for them.

was certainly afraid of the power he held over me,

This I liked. It is hard to get comfortable with someone if this is the case. No matter how good they are to you.

My son, accusing me of behaving immodestly.

Both good and not good. What is good is the convo about not being able to mother out misogyny even if you do everything right. What's bad is that K needs to be perfect ( as a stepmom) to be treated as reliable + likable character.

Being a warrior is worthy. But war is not something to wish for. It destroys people, destroys kingdoms. A raja should not wish for it. There is far more to being a ruler than that.”

How could Bharata compete with a god?

valid moment kinda liked. some motherly concern

Sage Vamadeva had spent two years with my children, with Rama, without my knowing.

One of the stronger pts of bk is conversation about who influences your child and their access to your child.

loved him and was happy for him. But that did not mean that I thought he was better than me at everything we tried, or that I deferred to him in every matter.

“Loyalty to your family is an excellent quality, and to be commended. But you can be someone beyond your loyalty—and you should be, because you have so much to offer.”

Who you are and loyalty to your self is just as important. To be selfless is not the bastion people think it is. I would say aspire to be unselfish not selfless.

“I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Feels. Who you are outside of others who may take alot of space. You are simply more than people you are adjacent to. Sometimes, it does feel like this quote.

For all my frustrations with the gods, I did not think them evil.

He is the tallest of all—my brothers now.” Somehow, the words your sons would not move past my throat.

Slights of potential here and there in Patel's writing. It's mostly phrasal stuff. How someone describes action or detail someone else wouldn't properly include. That stuff always wins with me. There's lot more in part I. In her family home and with her brothers. Then it kinda of disappears. It is however here because we are again talking about her fam.

Have I ever been happy here before?