Bharat was the son of king
Dasaratha and
Kaikeyi, of the Solar Dynasty, and the half-brother of
Lord Ram. He was educated by his mother’s father, Aswapathi, king of Kekaya, and married Mandavi, cousin of
Sita. Being an emblem of dharma and love, he always did his lawful duty without considering his distress and criticism. In
Ramayana, when Ram was forced to abandon the throne for Bharat and went to forest as an exile, Bharat replaced the throne with Ram’s sandals and governed
Ayodhya merely as the representative of his elder brother, paying devotion to Ram's sandals. Thus he displays himself as a man of idealism, after Ram.
