Born in 1848 to Vasudeo Rao and his wife, the adoption rights of Ananda Rao were given up to the king of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao, and his eighteen-year-old wife, Queen Manikarnika, better known as Rani Laxmi Bai, on 19th November 1853 at Gangadhar's deathbed. Laxmi Bai had given birth to her biological son, Damodar Rao, in 1851, but he survived only for three months. The nine-year-old Manu married the twenty-nine-year-old Gangadhar after the death of his first wife. He died in 1853. Vasudeo was a distant relative of the royals, also of the same lineage. Upon the coming of the doctrine of Lapse, all rights of Jhansi were transferred to the British Raj, with whom the Queen fought some patient court cases till 1857, asking them to give back what was rightfully hers. The British neither allowed her to go to Varanasi to complete her rights as a widow, nor let her do Damodar's threading ceremony. After the famous battle of Kalpi, which was after the wrath of the Jhansi massacre, the Ra...