One day they will pen against you their Manifesto of Blame, and you must not wait until then to understand who will stand by your side and who will not.

Maharaja Devdas II, Mushkilat-e-Mard, 1768

Every morning, the King would come back from His breakfast buffet, take a long bath, then walk straight into the palace foyer, where He would observe the day’s performances till sundown. There would be poets, musicians, dancers, dramatists, chefs, and gymnasts. The King would scroll through one performance after another, praising the artists, awarding titles, and handing out blessings. It was most exciting and joyful for everyone who came and went. The King was a bad person. His sister and His brother hated Him, but they were also as bad as the King was. If they could each write five hundred words about how the King was the most deceitful, manipulative, cruel, and belligerent person on the planet, the King could write five hundred and fifty about each of them.

One fateful night, when the King-Father was away, the tensions between the siblings swelled into physical violence that broke out inside of the royal residence. The King and His brother had arrived drunk at the dinner table, and they ended up picking up knives against each other. The sister was screaming at them both to stop, but their duel was primal. They wanted to hurt each other. The violence halted, however, when the King unintentionally ended up slashing His sister’s cheek amid the chaos. Her skin broke open and blood erupted out of her face, which she held tightly as she rolled on the ground in pain, crying. The King and His brother dropped their knives. The brother rushed to her crying sister and held her, looking at the King with big, moist, red eyes. We hate you, he hissed, Get away from us. The King had never known more severe guilt.

And so the next day, the King made the biggest decision of His life. Later, on the endmost day of that year, He acted on His decision. He declared His father regent and left the kingdom for a year-long exile. To say that the people were uproariously confused about why the King had taken the decision to suddenly leave for a year would be a little bit of a lie. The people did not really care. Most of the royal family did not really care that much, either. The brother took pleasure in knowing that a man as cruel as the King would not be in the kingdom for at least some time. He saw it as the closest thing to justice that he could get. And the sister? What the sister had for the King was worse than hatred. She had disallowed even the mere mention of the King’s name around her. His scar on her left cheek in the mirror made her cry every day.

The King sailed away on one of His ships and, many nights later, arrived on the shore of one of His smallest outlying island territories. His men had erected a decent house for His stay, complete with a connected temple, a park, and a gymnasium. But the most important feature of His retreat estate was the world’s largest library. Five stories high, stretching as wide as a coliseum, and containing more books than a hundred men could read in their combined lifetimes, it was connected to the house by a long corridor which led straight into the gigantic building’s reading area. The King read for hours every day. In the first many months, He would come back from His morning training at the gymnasium, take a quick bath, then run straight to the reading area and read till sundown. No matter anything else, till sundown every single day. He studied philosophy, He studied theism, and He studied the sciences. If He would ever struggle to grasp a concept fully, He would seek help from others in the library who were more learned than Him in the specific subjects. After the first few seasons, the King’s reading time began to shrink, because He had then started writing too. He could not have not. He had too many ideas developing inside of Him. He wrote about what it is to be a good man, and compiled his writings into a book, thinking He would publish it after He returned to the capital, so everyone could read it. Perhaps He would publish it in the autumn of the next year, when everyone in the capital liked to stay indoors and read.

Every day after the King’s time at the library, He would return to His house to find a line of people at the door. All of them would want to speak to the King, and discuss the fundamental struggles in their lives with the wisest man they knew. On many days, even the Governor of the island would come, who was particularly fond of the King and His teachings. The King was always happy to help the people, to try His best to make their lives better. He observed that the people looked up to Him in all areas of life. They had even begun to copy His routine, in particular the morning trainings and the many hours with Him in the library, reading and writing. Every week the King would see more and more people in the reading hall, glued to their pages, and the sight would fill Him with joy. Every time the King would need anything, the people would jump to help. They would cook for Him on the nights He was out of fish, carry Him to the reading hall on the days He had fever, put His clothes out to dry on the evenings He was too busy to, and anything else that they could. One night, when the King was having dinner together with the people and the Governor outside the temple, He asked them how He could pay the islanders back for everything they had done for Him, to which the Governor responded that the King must just publish His book as soon as He could. The King promised that He would.

Despite all this, the King had made few friends on the island through His stay, and He was not close with those few friends. He did not want to spend the time to connect with the people here, because He was so focused on the people back in the capital that He would be returning to, He realised. He was very lonely— He could not sleep some nights. Those nights, he would think about His sister and His brother. He would think about all the days He had trained them, educated them, protected them, ate, slept, and played with them, and then He would think about the night of the duel. It would make Him weep. By the end of winter, His health had started to deteriorate a whit as well. In the final week of the year, He wrote in his journal about His journey of transformation and learning, of reading and of writing, and of becoming a better person. Most importantly, He found that all of the hatred He had for His sister and His brother had disappeared completely.

On the beautiful spring day of the new year, the King was greeted by another royal ship arriving at the shore. Early that morning, He had written two letters— messages of apology and responsibility to His sister and His brother. He thought He would deliver them personally once He was back in the kingdom. In an emotional ceremony, He bid farewell to the people of the island and thanked them for their kindnesses. He fully handed over His estate and its facilities to the public, before He boarded His vessel and set off. There was not any sort of grand celebration when the King returned to the capital, but the people told Him that He looked different now, stronger, wiser, and they were glad to see that. He saw that His sister and His brother were gone. The King-Father told Him that the sister had been married to a prince from an allied kingdom, and the brother had been appointed into the cabinet and was on a visit to another allied kingdom, where he would remain for quite some time. The King was upset upon hearing this, because He wanted to see them and deliver His letters personally. Instead, He asked His messengers to deliver the letters.

The King resumed His duties as the leader of His country soon after. He would come back from His breakfast buffet, take a long bath, then walk straight into the palace foyer, where he would observe the day’s performances till sundown. There would be poets, musicians, dancers, dramatists, chefs, and gymnasts. The King would scroll through one performance after another, praising the artists, awarding titles, and handing out blessings. It was most exciting and joyful for everyone who came and went.

Months passed, but the King never saw His siblings. The brother avoided court at all costs, and he would spend even the cabinet meetings in silence. The sister would still not allow any mention of the King near her. The King summoned the two messengers He had tasked to deliver the letters to His siblings. They told Him that they doubted if either of the siblings had even looked at the contents of the letters, based on how they had received them. The brother had scoffed and thrown the letter in his drawer, before walking off to his friends in the other room. The sister had not even received the letter personally—one of her guards had—and he had not appeared happy to have had. The King was upset upon hearing this, although He observed that while they were keeping away from Him, the sister and the brother met each other very frequently. Every month. Every month, the sister would sail to the kingdom, ride to the capital, and meet the brother in his office. She would stay for two days every time, then return to her alien home.

On the first day of the autumn, two books were published in the kingdom. One of them was by the King, and the other one, the much shorter one, was by the sister and the brother. One of them sold incredibly well in the capital, and the other one did not sell at all. There were demonstrations outside the palace, and people demanded to speak with the courtiers. Debates broke out at the ground. The courtiers agreed with each other and they disagreed. The Generals suggested that a referendum must be held, because people had varying views regarding the allegations. But the ministers were uncomfortable with the idea, because divine law stated that the only way to remove the monarch was if the monarch takes the decision to step down themself. Half of the room countered by citing the qualities of the gods, if the King met the qualities of the gods, and if He did not, if divine law applied to Him. The King had read the other book Himself too. In fact, He had read the book ten times. And He was reading it again. The Manifesto of Blame. He had considered many, many things, heavens know He had the time to, for He had not slept for many nights then. Had the King really pinned His sister against the wall and stabbed her in the face just because she had refused to marry His suitor of choice? Who knew? Any answer from any party involved would get lost in this dreadful debate, and even the King’s own answer would not be unstained. So many intellectuals here. So many liars. In the end, He decided to step forward, and proclaim to the people, His abdication.

The agreement was that after the brother was coronated, the King would go back to the outlying territory, where He would serve as Governor. And so it was. The new Governor sailed to the tiny island in one of his ships, and the people there were overjoyed to see him back. They told him that they had all read his book, and that it was the most incredible book they had ever read. They told him that the other book by his siblings was the most hilarious bag of lies they had ever seen. They were thrilled to receive him as their Governor, and he was happy too. He returned to his old estate and started his new life as the ruler of the island. He would come back from his morning training at the gymnasium, take a quick bath, then run straight to the library and read and write till sundown. No matter anything else, till sundown every single day.