Ayodhya Kanda opens with the aging King Dasharatha announcing his intention to crown Rama, his eldest and most beloved son, as heir, a decision the entire kingdom greets with joy, before the queen Kaikeyi, manipulated by her scheming maid Manthara into fearing her own son Bharata will be sidelined, calls in two old boons Dasharatha had once granted her for saving his life in battle, demanding Bharata be crowned instead and Rama exiled to the forest for fourteen years. Bound by his own word, Dasharatha is devastated but cannot refuse, and Rama accepts the reversal without protest or bitterness, insisting his father's honor matters more than his own claim to the throne, and departs for the forest accompanied, by their own insistence rather than any requirement, by his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana.
Dasharatha dies of grief and heartbreak shortly after Rama's departure, and Bharata, returning from a journey to find his mother's scheme has cost him his father and his brother's presence both, refuses the throne in horror, traveling to the forest to beg Rama to return; Rama, unwilling to break his father's word even after death, refuses, and Bharata instead rules as regent, placing Rama's sandals on the throne as a symbol of the kingdom's true sovereign.