Tiger Stone is fiction but the story is set against a backdrop of real events. The wider world tells the story of the neighbouring Majapahit and Sunda (Pajajaran) kingdoms, the doomed marriage of King Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit to Princess Pitaloka of Sunda and the Battle of Bubat.
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Hayam Wuruk was the fourth King of Majapahit, reigning from 1350 to 1389. Citra Rashmi (also known as Princess Pitaloka) was the daughter of the King of Sunda, Prabu Maharaja Lingga Buana.
In 1357 a matchmaker was sent from Majapahit to Sunda to ask for Princess Pitaloka’s hand in marriage to King Hayam Wuruk.
The Sunda royal family set sail for Trowulan, the Majapahit capital, anticipating a happy future for Sunda once Pitaloka was Queen of Majapahit.
Tiger Stone is set during the fourteenth century when King Hayam Wuruk ruled the Majapahit Kingdom and the Majapahit Kingdom ruled over most of Java. This period is remembered as a golden age in Java's history because the Majapahit influence spread across the sea to distant islands.
The Majapahit king was so powerful that the rulers of weaker kingdoms would offer him great gifts to win his favour. He was, in fact, the ruler of a mighty empire.
Or was he?
The main source of written information about fourteenth century Java is a very long poem known as either the Desawarnana or the Naga... The poem goes into great detail about King Hayam Wuruk's achievements including all the lands he conquered, which are shown on the map above. The problem with the Desawarnana as a historical source is that it was written as a eulogy to King Hayam Wuruk. The primary purpose of a eulogy is to say nice things about someone who has died; nobody expects a eulogist to be brutally honest. So, without other sources of evidence to back up the Desawarnana's story, historians are sceptical of its claims. Robert Cribb, an Australian academic who wrote the Digtal Atlas of Indonesia, suggests that the map above probably just shows the places King Hayam Wuruk visited.
Even if the Desawarnana did overstate King Hayam Wuruk's achievements, nobody doubts that the Majapahit era was an important time in Java's history. I first became aware of Majapahit when I was a student at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. The university was named after Gadjah Mada,
While the Majapahit Kingdom may have been spreading its influence from Sumatra to Papua, it certainly wasn’t having much luck closer to home. The Sunda Kingdom (also known as Pajajaran) in West Java never submitted to Majapahit rule and echoes of the rivalry between the two kingdoms can still be heard today.
Even less is known about the Sunda Kingdom than is known about the Majapahit Kingdom but...