Image: Rama's Banishment
Author's Note: The choices in this story were inspired by a Buddhist version of the Ramayana called the Dasaratha-Jataka and the PDE version of the Ramayana. I tried to create a beginning and end that fits each version of the story so the choice would show most of the differences between the two versions of the story. I found that to be very difficult, however, because the stories are so different. I decided to incorporate details from both into the shared part of the story which is why Dasharatha can't remember what Kaikeyi's boons are for - in one version Kaikeyi gets a boon for giving birth to Bharatha and in the other she gets two boons for saving Dasharatha's life. When I had to make choices for the plot's sake between the two I usually chose the PDE's version of events which means I had to leave out some cool parts of the Dasaratha- Jataka such as the fact that Rama and Sita are siblings, but I was able to include that Dasharatha has thousands of wives which comes from this version. I also chose to use the more common spellings found in the PDE versions instead of the spellings from the Jataka.
Bibliography: