The kings of Ayodhya trace themselves to Ikshvaku, but the line takes its name from Raghu, the emperor whose righteousness every later son is measured against. In Valmiki's genealogy Raghu is followed by Pravriddha and several intervening generations before Nabhaga, whose son Aja fathers Dasharatha. The tale of Aja's love for Indumati belongs to the later Raghuvamsha, where he is Raghu's own son and survives her by eight grieving years. Dasharatha inherits the throne, four sons, three queens and two unpayable debts: the two boons he had promised Kaikeyi and the curse of a blind ascetic whose son he killed by accident.
Dasharatha's sons come from three mothers, and the mothers are the fracture lines. Kausalya, long childless and sidelined, bears Rama and invests her whole identity in him. Kaikeyi, the youngest and favourite, bears Bharata. Sumitra bears the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna. When Kaikeyi's maidservant Manthara reactivates her fear of displacement, Kaikeyi calls in her two boons: one for Bharata's installation, the other for Rama's fourteen-year exile. Dasharatha dies of grief. Bharata denounces his own mother as his father's killer, refuses the stolen throne, and rules as an ascetic regent; Shatrughna beats Manthara for her part in it. The brothers' loyalty survives the war their mothers fought.
The marriages come in a single stroke. The sage Vishvamitra takes Rama and Lakshmana from Ayodhya to train them and leads them to Mithila, where Janaka and his queen have raised Sita, a foundling from a furrow, alongside Urmila. Janaka's bow-test gives Sita to Rama, Urmila to Lakshmana, and Janaka's brother Kushadhwaja supplies Mandavi for Bharata and Shrutakirti for Shatrughna — two households bound fourfold. Then Ravana abducts Sita, Hanuman finds her, and the war restores her only for Rama to banish her, pregnant, to protect his standing as king. Lakshmana, fused to his brother and long separated from Urmila, is the one made to leave her in the forest.
In the Sanskrit epic attributed to Valmiki — compiled in stages, with major compilation often estimated around 400-200 BCE and some layers later, and the source this tree follows — the sage himself becomes the ending. He shelters the banished Sita and raises her twins, Kusha and Lava, in his hermitage, fathering them in every way but blood. They grow up not knowing Rama, then sing his own story back to him at his horse sacrifice, after which Valmiki identifies them as his sons. It is the sharpest indictment the tradition allows itself: a dynasty founded on a king's word, whose two most dutiful men each sacrifice their family to it, and whose heirs have to be taught who their father is.
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