Hampi: The King and His Queens

Hampi, 1509. Through a serendipitous twist of fate, a carefree Prince Krishna finds himself crowned Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara empire. This means he must marry a royal princess and beget an heir to the throne. But Krishna is secretly in love with a devadasi, a temple dancer. Torn between Princess Thirumaladevi, the woman who complements his royal persona, and the graceful dancer Chinnadevi, the woman who completes him, between his need of an heir and his promise to be intimate only with his beloved, Krishna faces a rare conundrum for an emperor who can have almost anything he wants.

This is also the story of an emperor who builds Vijayanagara into a capital strewn with stunningly beautiful temples and palaces, bazaar streets and festival squares, who fights many battles, defeats the kingdoms of Kalinga and Bijayapura, and creates perhaps the largest empire known to the medieval world.

Even while Krishnadevaraya straddles his world like a god, he dares to be human; for he braves the very fury of the gods to love, and then to lose, to regret and then to learn to live again.