Jayanegara

Few Majapahit rulers fare worse in the surviving sources than Jayanegara, who succeeded his father Kertarajasa in 1309 after serving as junior king at Daha. The Pararaton identifies his mother as Dara Petak, the Sumatran princess from the Malayu expedition, while the Nagarakretagama simply presents him as Kertarajasa's son and heir; he was probably still in his teens at his accession.

His reign was consumed by rebellion. The revolts that had begun under his father continued in a chain the Pararaton lists almost as a litany: Juru Demung, Gajah Biru, and most seriously Nambi, the patih whose destruction in 1316 is also marked in inscription. In 1319 the rebel Kuti seized the capital itself. The king escaped to the village of Badander guarded by a small unit of the Bhayangkara palace guard under a young officer named Gajah Mada, who then returned to the capital, gauged opinion, and organized the counterstroke that destroyed Kuti and restored the king. The episode, told only in the Pararaton, marks Gajah Mada's first appearance in history and earned him rapid promotion.

The Pararaton's portrait of the restored king is openly hostile. It calls him Kala Gemet, a derisive nickname, and accuses him of immorality, including preventing his half-sisters from marrying so as to keep them for himself. How much of this reflects fact and how much later court polemic cannot be determined. In 1328 he was murdered by Tanca, a court physician, who was cut down on the spot by Gajah Mada; the circumstances behind the assassination are obscure, and the Pararaton is again the only source.

Jayanegara maintained the external contacts his father had opened, and Chinese records note renewed missions between Java and the Yuan court during his reign. He died without children, and the throne passed to the line of Gayatri Rajapatni through her daughter Tribhuwana — the branch under which Majapahit would reach its height.