They say history repeats itself, but not always. Sometimes, its threads run parallel, and on rare occasions, they collide. Like in this story of the prince and the commoner. The songstress, in whose veins blue blood might flow, was marching forward, while the prince was learning about his Bhil ancestry for the very first time in his life. When Uday Singh revealed to his sons their family history, Ajay Singh mulled over its political ramifications, but Abhimanyu found it hard to comprehend how his life had been upended once again. He thought about all the times he had willingly played the royalty card. His mind raced to the imagined slight by the actress in Bombay who had laid her hand on the prince. He thought about how stupid it was of him to take offense to that.

And what of his decision to let go of Meera – his self-righteous undertaking to preserve the honour of his family name? Now, it seemed rather inane. He felt sick to his stomach as he watched his father, a man he had always looked up to, falter and bend over backwards to protect the myth of their dynasty. There is nothing more disheartening than to see your idols fall, thought Abhimanyu, while listening to Uday Singh resort to vanity to defend the purity of his blood. Suddenly, the exalted talks of the 600-year rule rang hollow. Winning power for centuries to come became less important than protecting the Suryavanshi lineage. So what if they crashed and burned in the elections? The name should remain untarnished! Abhimanyu was never one to bask in the purity of his blood, but once he knew the truth, he felt strangely robbed. Deep down, it confirmed his own hypocrisy – Abhimanyu discovered that he did like being a prince, but he just wanted to be seen as some one who didn’t care much about his royal status. His perception of himself as one who would come down from his high throne to be one with the people had been busted, and the veneer of humility had come off. He confronted his brother about how he could go on running the campaign of lies. ‘Royalty is a culture, not biology,’ his brother argued. Ajay Singh could not break his belief system in face of the truth, but the shame stayed with Abhimanyu for a long time to come.