The Mahabharata
Fourteen generations of the lunar house, from Yayati to the king who first heard the epic told.
The Kuru dynasty is a branch of the lunar house, the Chandravamsha, and it reaches the Mahabharata already carrying a habit of irregular succession. Yayati passed over four elder sons to crown Puru, the one who agreed to trade youth for his father's old age. Generations later the line ran through Dushyanta and Shakuntala to their son Bharata, who gave his name to the dynasty, to the land, and to the epic itself; and through Bharata to Kuru, who ploughed the plain that would one day be Kurukshetra.
The crisis begins with Shantanu. His first wife was the river goddess Ganga, who bore him Devavrata, an heir with no equal. His second was Satyavati, whose fisher-chief father would give her only on the condition that her sons inherit. To buy his father that marriage Devavrata renounced the throne and swore never to take a wife, and for that vow he was called Bhishma, the terrible. It secured the marriage and destroyed the succession: Satyavati's two sons died young and childless, and the Kuru line simply stopped.
What restarted it was niyoga, the old custom by which a widow could bear an heir for her dead husband's line by another man. Satyavati summoned Vyasa, her own son by the sage Parashara, born before her marriage. Three children came of those nights - Dhritarashtra born blind, Pandu born pale, and Vidura born of a maidservant and so barred from the throne - and every one of them had a defect that could be argued about. A generation later Pandu's curse forced the same expedient again, and his five sons were fathered by gods. So when the cousins came of age, both sides had a case: Dhritarashtra was the elder but blind, Pandu had reigned but was dead, and neither set of sons was born in the ordinary way. The inheritance was divided, then disputed, then gambled away, and the argument ended at Kurukshetra.
Select any name to open its card. The tree scrolls sideways where a generation runs wide.