Raden Wijaya

The founder of Majapahit began his career as a defeated fugitive. Raden Wijaya was a son-in-law of Kertanegara, the last king of Singhasari, and when Jayakatwang of Kediri overthrew and killed Kertanegara in 1292, Wijaya escaped the collapse of the kingdom. Sheltered on Madura by the regent Arya Wiraraja, he submitted to Jayakatwang and was granted the right to clear a settlement in the Tarik forest on the Brantas delta. The place took its name, according to tradition, from the bitter maja fruit found there: Majapahit.

His opportunity arrived in 1293 in the form of a Yuan fleet sent by Kublai Khan to punish Kertanegara, who had mutilated the Mongol envoy Meng Qi years earlier. Finding their target dead, the commanders accepted Wijaya's offer of alliance against Jayakatwang. The combined forces took Daha and destroyed the Kediri regime, whereupon Wijaya turned on his allies, ambushed their detachments, and forced the expedition to withdraw from Java. Later in 1293 he was consecrated king under the name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

The Nagarakretagama records that he married four daughters of Kertanegara, presenting the new dynasty as Singhasari's legitimate continuation; the youngest, Gayatri Rajapatni, would become the ancestress of the line that produced Majapahit's greatest rulers. The Pararaton adds Dara Petak, a princess brought back from the Malayu expedition Kertanegara had dispatched to Sumatra, and names her as mother of his heir Jayanegara.

The new kingdom's first years were unstable. The Pararaton and later kidung literature recount revolts by men who had fought beside Wijaya, beginning with Ranggalawe in 1295 and followed by Lembu Sora; the chronology and motives of these episodes are uncertain and colored by literary elaboration. Kertarajasa died in 1309 and was commemorated with funerary foundations, including the shrine at Simping. He left a kingdom small in extent but positioned, through its Brantas valley heartland and its claim to Singhasari's mantle, to dominate Javanese politics for two centuries.