The war is a family quarrel: across the field stand cousins, teachers and elders, all owed reverence.
Where it is argued
The birth of the Kuru princes — A blind heir, a pale one and a renunciant's vow leave the succession contested before any of the cousins can walk.
The house of lac — A guest house built to burn: the first attempt on the Pandavas' lives, and the escape that lets them be thought dead.
Abhimanyu inside the wheel — A boy who knows how to break into a formation and not how to break out of it is sent in first, and the gap closes behind him
The Rajasuya sacrifice — Yudhishthira's consecration as emperor — the height of the Pandavas' fortune, and the sight that decides Duryodhana to act.
Who embodies it
Bhima — The strongest of the brothers, whose two vows in the assembly hall turn a property dispute into something that can only end in bodies.
Duryodhana — The eldest Kaurava, who never disputes that the kingdom is contested and never concedes that this makes the Pandavas' claim equal to his.
Shakuni — Gandhari's brother and Duryodhana's strategist, who takes a kingdom without a weapon by being better at a game nobody was allowed to refuse.
Dhritarashtra — The blind elder brother passed over for the throne and left holding it anyway, who can always see what his son is doing and never stops him.
Abhimanyu — Arjuna's son, sent to open a formation he had said out loud he could enter and not leave, on the day the war stopped keeping its rules.
