And the people remembered the custom of the good King who had denied a hearing to no one; and they said: “The King’s daughter is herself to-day a beggar.” So they listened, making it easy for Raziya to speak.
And Raziya said: “My brother has killed his brother, and now he would slay me.”
And all the people, as one man, vowed to help her. And Raziya was put upon the throne of Delhi.
Raziya and the Peasant
And Raziya ruled as few men have ruled in Delhi. She loved justice and mercy, and she gave both to her people. She led them to battle, pitching her own tent in the place of greatest danger: she was generous and wise, and entirely forgetful of her woman’s self. All this her people knew of her; and all this historians have said of her.
But one old man, who wrote the longest tale of her gifts and virtues, tells us the reason of her failure to rule India: “She was a great monarch; but she was a woman, and she ruled as a man.”
The Moslem people of those days could not forgive her that. They could not forgive her that, being a woman, she came before them with face unveiled; that, being a woman, she did successfully the work of a man, and asked no woman’s reward. And so, though they took her love and protection for so long that they forgot the cruelty of her brother who had reigned before, they turned against her in the end and dethroned her, and put her in prison.
From prison later, she escaped, and led an army to regain her kingdom. And perhaps she might some day have won it back, but for a sad thing that befell her.
In the battle which she waged she was defeated, and fled alone to the jungles.