Okay, yesterday's depiction of Mandavi really forced me to come here and create this topic.
First things first. In Valmiki Ramayan, all that is known about Mandavi is that she married Bharat, and that (implicitly), she later had 2 sons Taksha and Pushkal, who accompanied their father in a war against the Gandharvas and conquered Gandhara and established 2 kingdoms there.
Has anyone read anything else about her in any of the other Ramayans - Adhyatma Ramayan, RamCharitManas, Ananda Ramayan, Adhbhut Ramayan or any of the other linguistic versions by other authors - Kamban, Krittivas, et al?
Reading about yesterday's episode where Mandavi was seething at Bharat losing that fictional contest against Rama, I thought that reactions might be one of outrage, since there were no saas-bahu relationships in Ayodhya. But if one just goes by the texts, there has been no character descriptions of either Mandavi nor Shrutiakirti. In Krittivas, Lakshman was described as asking Nidra devi to transfer all his sleep to Urmila, so that he doesn't have to sleep. But other than that, there is nothing about the other 3 sisters that remotely describes their character.
Therefore, the depiction of Mandavi in previous serials, where Bharat asked her to serve Mata Kaushalya, seemed really invented - I have no idea whether even Tulsidas had any account of that. While it is true that Bharat lived like a hermit in Nandigram, does it say that he lived like a Brahmachari? And are they trying to build up a justification for him shunning Mandavi during the 14 years by depicting her as a vamp here?
In ASR, when Lakshman got injured by Indrajit's shakti, they showed Urmila as unbelievably rude towards Sumitra, which was pretty outrageous. Here, it looks like they want to do some character exploration of Mandavi. In the ASR, they had Manthara try and instigate Mandavi to have dreams about being the Yuvrani of Ayodhya, but there, she pointed out that that role was Sita's, and Bharat came to her rescue and warned Manthara against repeating it.
Also, while nothing is mentioned about Mandavi & Shrutakirti, during this time, Bharat & Shatrughtan were visiting their mama's kingdom in Kekaya. There is no reason to think that Mandavi & Shrutakirti weren't accompanying them (which is what they showed in ASR)
