Her throne before the throne: A feminist Power-structure reading of Anand Neelakandan’s The Rise of Sivagami

This paper offers a feminist power-structure reading of The Rise of Sivagami by Anand Neelakandan, foregrounding how female authority operates within and against the deeply patriarchal political culture of the Mahishmati Empire. Using Feminist Literary Theory as its primary analytical framework particularly drawing on the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millett, and Elaine Showalter the study examines how literature both reflects and constructs gendered power relations. Feminist theory argues that patriarchy is sustained through cultural narratives that marginalize women’s agency, while feminist criticism seeks to recover women’s voices, experiences, and modes of power within such narratives. Sivagami is read within this framework, not merely as a queen regent but as a politically sovereign woman who negotiates, appropriates, and reshapes masculine systems of governance. The title “Her Throne Before the Throne” signifies Sivagami’s symbolic and practical precedence over the male sovereign, emphasizing how her authority precedes, conditions, and often overrides patriarchal rule. Her leadership, maternal politics, and moral sovereignty reveal how female power functions as a disruptive force within traditional monarchical structures. Rather than portraying Sivagami as an exceptional woman who merely adapts to male power, Neelakandan’s narrative presents her as one who actively redefines legitimacy, loyalty, and justice through a distinctly feminine political consciousness. Her emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and strategic vision become central to the empire’s stability, illustrating what Kate Millett describes as the political nature of gender relations. The paper argues that The Rise of Sivagami constructs a counter-hegemonic model of leadership in which female governance is neither derivative nor secondary, by situating Sivagami within feminist debates on agency, authority, and representation. Instead, Sivagami emerges as the ideological and structural core of Mahishmati’s political order. The study thus reinterprets the novel as a feminist re-visioning of epic power, where the throne is sustained not by masculine dominance but by a woman’s political intelligence, moral authority, and resilience.