God of War

The mystery man

Note- The story took a leap of 14 years. I will show Karna's interaction with Guru Parshuram in a flashback along with the story. Now it's the time for some action from our beloved Vasusen. 

Hastinapur, 14 years later,

During the last 14 years, many things had changed. King Kaustav, the Maharaj of Kuntibhoj and queen Kunti's beloved brother and his wife Priyamvada had taken the entire Kuru elders into his confidence by his sweet talk and good political knowledge. The Kuru elders like Bheesm, Vidur, Kripacharya including Guru Drona trusted him and considered him as a well-wisher of Kuru family. Little did they know that they themselves were inviting the biggest problem for their kingdom. 

Since childhood Kaustav was greedy and selfish. He was a sadistic person who loved to torment the poor. But his own father was a kind and benevolent ruler so he always hid his true nature from his father. In his all hidden evil works, he got a partner in the form of his lover Priyamvada. Priyamvada was the daughter of the prime minister of Kuntibhoj. As king Kuntibhoj had no daughter, he loved Priyamvada as his own. Since childhood, Priya and Kaustav were very close and Priya had a dream to be the queen of the kingdom one day. But once Kuntibhoj adopted Pritha, his friend's daughter, both Priya and Kaustav were jealous of her. Kaustav realized that now his father got another heir. He wanted to remove Pritha/Kunti from his path but Priya told him not to do anything directly as Pritha belonged to Yadav clan and Yadavas were very powerful. So they always behaved very sweetly with Kunti and naive Kunti considered them as her best friends. 

When Kunti got the boon from sage Durvasha and then summoned Suryadev and got pregnant, then Kaustav wanted to tell that incident to everyone to tarnish Kunti's reputation. But Priya stopped him saying, 'Look my prince, king Kuntibhoj is a religious man. When he will come to know that the kid is the son of Suryadev, then he will take him as his own. That kid will be the heir of the throne. But if we can convince Kunti to leave that boy or to kill him then she will definitely get a curse from the Devtas for dishonoring a Devputra. So we have to convince that foolish girl in the name of her father's reputation to kill the kid. Thus Kunti will be a sinner and in future, you will be the king.' So it was Kaustav and Priya who forced Kunti to throw her newborn in the river and then Kunti got the curse from Suryadev. Kaustav came to know about the curse and thought, 'In future, Kunti will definitely use the boon and get Devputras as her sons. But because of the curse, they will have bad qualities in them. So if I can play my cards well, then I will make them my puppets and use them for my own gain. I will be the Emperor of entire Aryavart and then I will remove those cursed Devputras from my path.' So he played his role as a Mama to the Pandavas so beautifully that everyone thought that he loved his nephews very much. But the people had no idea that Kaustav was slowly poisoning the Pandavas against their own cousins. He was the one who was mainly responsible for the rift in the Kuru family. In fact he also made some dangerous conspiracies to remove the Kauravas before their birth itself.

When Kaustav came to know about Pandu's curse and Gandhari's pregnancy before Kunti, then he bribed the maids of Hastinapur and added a dangerous poison on Gandhari's food so that her children will die before they even born. But to his dismay, Gandhari's sons did not die and after a long pregnancy, Gandhari gave birth to a lump of flesh on a stormy night. Everyone thought that as a bad omen and was almost ready to destroy the lump. Gandhari was crying sitting in a room, then suddenly she heard cries of babies. Everyone in the palace was surprised and when everyone came back to the nursery, they saw that the lump of flesh was turned into three cute boys. Both Dhritarashtra and Gandhari were ecstatic to have three sons together but others were skeptical. Taking the opportunity Kaustav spread many bad rumors about the kids and everyone started considering them as evils. But Kaustav and Priyamvada themselves were surprised that how did those kids were alive even after they were poisoned? Even after that, Kaustav tried many times to kill the three princes along with Yuyutsu but every time some unknown power stopped him and thwarted all his conspiracies. But still Kaustav was not very tensed as he knew that soon the eldest Pandav Yudhistir would be the king and Kaustav would rule through him.