Sadashiva Raya
Sadashiva Raya was king of Vijayanagara from 1542 until 1570 and ruled for none of it. He was a nephew of Achyuta Deva Raya, and he was put on the throne by Aliya Rama Raya to end the succession fighting that followed Achyuta's death. The arrangement was not disguised. Rama Raya held the government, the army and the revenue, and the king was kept in confinement for most of the reign, produced in public once a year so that the court could see he was alive. Coins and inscriptions were issued in his name throughout, which is why the reign is well dated despite being politically empty, and it is from those inscriptions rather than from any chronicle that most of what is known about his position comes. Portuguese and Persian visitors understood the arrangement perfectly well and wrote about Rama Raya as the ruler. He survived the catastrophe that his regent caused. When the Deccan coalition destroyed the Vijayanagara army at Talikota in 1565 and Rama Raya was killed on the field, the court fled the capital to Penukonda taking the king with it, and he continued to reign there over the remnant for another five years. Real power passed to Rama Raya's brother Tirumala, who had commanded a wing at Talikota and got away. Sadashiva died in 1570, probably killed, and Tirumala took the throne openly, founding the fourth and last dynasty of Vijayanagara. His reign is a case study in the distinction between holding an office and exercising it: for twenty-eight years the legal sovereign of one of the largest states in Asia was a prisoner of his own minister, and the administration functioned, the coinage circulated and the wars were fought without him. The empire was lost during his reign and not by him. He is the last king of the Tuluva line.
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: ruler, head_of_state
