SOVEREIGN: The Untold History of Rajpipla

Her Side of the Empire: The Women Who Helped Give Birth to Rajpipla

The Queen of Junaraj and the Parmar Princess Who Bridged Two Dynasties

By Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar

Long before Rajpipla became a princely state, before British records attempted to catalog its rulers, and before generations of Gohils would carry its name, two women stood at a turning point in the history of the dynasty.

A mother.

A daughter.

A queen of the Parmar house of Junaraj and a princess whose marriage would connect two ancient royal lineages.

Their individual names have not survived in the historical record with the prominence given to the men around them. Their importance, however, survives in the genealogy itself.

Without the Parmar women of Junaraj, the story of Gohil Rajpipla cannot be told.

Before Rajpipla, There Was Junaraj

The story begins in the Satpura hills, where the Parmar ruler Chokrana held the principality associated with Junaraj.

This was a very different landscape from the coastal world of Piram Bet from which the Gohils would enter the story. The geography of the Satpuras created its own political world, shaped by forests, rivers, fortified settlements, local communities, neighboring powers, and generations of regional alliances.

Beside Chokrana stood his queen.

History has been far more generous in recording the names of kings than the women who shared their courts, maintained dynastic relationships, produced heirs, transmitted religious traditions, and connected royal houses through marriage.

Yet genealogy leaves us clues.

The queen and Chokrana had a daughter, a Parmar princess whose life would eventually connect Junaraj to one of the great Gohil figures of medieval Saurashtra.

That connection would change everything.

The Princess Between Two Worlds

The Parmar princess married Mokhadaji Gohil, the powerful Gohil chief associated with Piram Bet.

With that marriage, two political and dynastic worlds became connected.

On one side stood the Parmar heritage associated with Ujjain and Junaraj.

On the other stood the Gohils, descendants of a lineage whose story SOVEREIGN has already followed across centuries and geography.

Their marriage produced a son:

Samarsinhji.

At his birth, no one could have known the full historical significance that would eventually be attached to him.

Through his father, he belonged to the Gohil line.

Through his mother, he was the grandson of the Parmar ruler of Junaraj.

That maternal inheritance would become decisive.

When Succession Passed Through a Daughter

Chokrana eventually died without a male heir.

And here the women of this story become impossible to dismiss as peripheral figures.

The dynastic connection necessary for succession survived through his daughter.

Her son, Samarsinhji, was Chokrana's grandson.

The line had crossed through a woman and returned through her child.

According to the Rajpipla dynastic tradition, Samarsinhji succeeded to Junaraj and assumed the name Arjunsinhji.

It was a pivotal transition.

A grandson born from the union of a Parmar princess and a Gohil father became the ruler through his maternal inheritance.

From that succession emerged the Gohil ruling house of Rajpipla.

History may place Arjunsinhji's name on the succession.

But a fuller telling requires us to look at the women standing behind that name.

The Grandmother, the Mother and the Son

This is where Her Side of the Empire changes the lens.

The Queen of Junaraj represents the generation from which the Parmar inheritance descended.

Her daughter carried that inheritance into her marriage with Mokhadaji Gohil.

And their son carried both lineages onto the gadi.

Three generations became one historical bridge:

Grandmother. Mother. Son.

Parmar and Gohil.

Junaraj and Piram Bet.

The hills and the coast.

What looks in a genealogy like a simple succession was, in human terms, the convergence of families, inheritance, marriage, faith, geography and political continuity.

And women were at its center.

Harsiddhi Mataji and the Inheritance of Faith

The women's contribution to this story was not limited to bloodline.

The Rajpipla tradition also connects the Parmar heritage with devotion to Shri Harsiddhi Mataji, who became the Kuldevi, or lineage deity, of the Rajpipla royal house.

That matters.

Dynasties are not sustained by genealogy alone.

They carry rituals, sacred obligations, memories, symbols and forms of devotion from one generation to another. Women have historically played profound roles in carrying those traditions across households and through marriage.

The union of the Parmar and Gohil houses therefore represents more than political succession.

It also represents cultural and spiritual transmission.

A woman leaving one royal household for another did not necessarily leave her world behind.

Sometimes she carried that world with her.

The Problem With the Way History Is Usually Told

When we tell royal history only through lists of rulers, wars and treaties, women frequently disappear.

A king succeeds another king.

A son inherits.

A dynasty begins.

The genealogy looks clean.

Human history rarely is.

Behind succession were marriages negotiated across considerable distances. Mothers carried children between dynastic worlds. Queens maintained court traditions. Daughters transmitted inheritance. Widows navigated enormous political uncertainty. Religious traditions crossed from one house into another.

And sometimes an entire dynasty depended upon a connection that passed through a woman.

That is what makes the women of Junaraj so important to SOVEREIGN.

They were not decorative figures standing beside history.

They were part of the mechanism through which history moved.

Why I Am Telling Their Story

I did not inherit this history by birth.

I married into it.

That distinction has always mattered to me.

My husband, Manvendra Singh Gohil, descends from the royal house whose history I am exploring in this series. My responsibility is therefore not to insert myself into a lineage that existed centuries before me, but to approach it with respect, curiosity and a willingness to ask questions that conventional histories sometimes overlooked.

One of those questions is remarkably simple:

Where are the women?

If we know the kings but not the mothers who made succession possible, our history is incomplete.

If we celebrate dynastic alliances but forget the daughters through whom those alliances occurred, our history is incomplete.

If we trace bloodlines while ignoring the women through whom that bloodline traveled, our history is incomplete.

Her Side of the Empire is my attempt to look again.

Not to manufacture history where records are silent.

Not to assign achievements for which evidence does not exist.

But to recognize the significance that is already visible when we stop looking exclusively at the men.

Two Women. One Turning Point.

The Queen of Junaraj gave birth to the daughter through whom the succession would continue.

The Parmar princess married Mokhadaji Gohil and gave birth to Samarsinhji.

Samarsinhji inherited through his mother's line and became Arjunsinhji.

And from that convergence came the Gohil ruling house of Rajpipla.

Their names may not dominate the chronicles.

Their presence dominates the genealogy.

That is why they belong here.

Because SOVEREIGN cannot simply tell us who sat on the throne.

It must also ask who made the throne possible.

And sometimes, when we look closely enough, we discover that the history we thought belonged to kings was being carried quietly through the lives of women all along.

This is her side of the empire.

This is SOVEREIGN.