The Woman Who Saved Angkor's Soul

When Angkor's kings vanished and its temples surrendered to the jungle, one name survived in the memory of Cambodia's people: Indradevi. This episode tells the story of the scholar-queen who outlived her husband, Jayavarman VII, and became the last great voice of the Khmer Empire. We trace her journey from a royal tutor in the 12th century to the keeper of Angkor's Buddhist heart, through a period of war, plague, and regime change that historians have long oversimplified as a single 'collapse.' With inscriptions from Preah Khan and Ta Prohm as our guide, we explore how Indradevi used poetry, politics, and sheer tenacity to hold a fractured empire together. Along the way, we confront the myth of a sudden end—Angkor didn't fall overnight. It faded, and the women who kept its culture alive were written out of the story. This episode restores Indradevi to her rightful place, and asks what her survival tells us about the real end of an era. #KhmerEmpire #Indradevi #JayavarmanVII #Angkor #CambodiaHistory #SoutheastAsia #PreahKhan #TaProhm #Buddhism #MedievalHistory #12thCentury #13thCentury #GenderHistory #HistoricalWomen #Epigraphy #AngkorWat #History #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo