Wikramawardhana

The succession of 1389 passed over Hayam Wuruk's only son. Wikramawardhana was the late king's nephew, son of his sister Dyah Nertaja, and also his son-in-law through marriage to the princess Kusumawardhani; on this double claim he took the throne, while Wirabhumi, Hayam Wuruk's son by a concubine, continued to rule the eastern court as a semi-autonomous prince. The arrangement held for a decade and a half before collapsing into the war that marks the turning point of Majapahit's fortunes.

The Paregreg war, dated by the Pararaton to 1404–1406, pitted the western capital against Wirabhumi's eastern establishment. The fighting swung back and forth — the name is usually understood to mean something like advancing step by step — until the eastern court fell and Wirabhumi was pursued and killed in 1406. The Pararaton is virtually the only narrative source, and its compressed account leaves the war's causes and course uncertain; what is clear is the lasting damage to the kingdom's cohesion and resources.

The reign coincided with the great Ming maritime expeditions, and Chinese records illuminate it from outside. Zheng He's fleets called repeatedly at Java's ports. In 1407, Ming personnel who had landed in territory just taken from the eastern court were killed by Majapahit soldiers; the Yongle emperor demanded an indemnity of 60,000 taels of gold, of which a partial payment was eventually accepted and the balance remitted. The episode shows a court constrained to deference. Meanwhile Majapahit's overseas position eroded: Palembang passed under the control of Chinese settler communities, and the new sultanate of Malacca, founded by the fugitive prince Parameswara, captured the straits trade with Ming patronage.

Later Javanese tradition remembers Wikramawardhana ambivalently, and even his family arrangements are obscure; the Pararaton's notices of deaths and titles in these decades are terse and hard to reconcile. He died in 1429, after a reign of forty years that began at the kingdom's zenith and ended with its hegemony visibly contracting. His daughter Suhita succeeded him, followed in turn by his son Kertawijaya.