Royal Existentials

Royal Existentials describes the ideas that a common Indian individual would think about or speak on. In that sense, it manages to provide insight into the emotions that a common person would feel and provide insight into deciphering them or analyzing them. This facet of Royal Existentials is very similar to the pattern of international webcomics depicting the daily frustrations of individuals [1]. The idea was to create a political webcomic that addresses social and feminist issues, but with a uniquely Indian viewpoints. By putting words in their mouths, she has broken the characters’ enigmatic silence. What Royal Existentials aims to do is teach lessons to the public and be more aware of societal perspectives around them [2]. Royal Existentials uses existing Indian paintings, from various sources, which have been credited in each strip. Although the words and text change, the paintings remain rather stagnant, all harkening back to the days of Ancient India and the Mughal Empire. The use of this visual style allows the webcomic to build a stronger connection with its viewership in India [3].

The comic strip here shows a woman complaining to her husband about the injustice she has been shown. Although it brings up the idea of a patriarchal hierarchy in the Indian society, it also pokes fun at some of the extremist views in feminism by suggesting that certain claims of activists could be unreasonable.

1. Arora, K. (2010, Sep 06). Strip tease: Indian webcomics make a mark special report]. The Times of India Retrieved from http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/749565081?accountid=11107

2. Hong, Wei-Chen, and Shelley Shwu-Ching Young. "Playing webcomic-based game on Facebook for learning Chinese festivals." In International Conference on Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment, pp. 185-189. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011.

3. Noh theatre, the art of ink drawing and the ukiyo-e. Parthasarathy, Aarthi. 2014. "A new comic strip uses Mughal miniatures to convey contemporary angst." Scroll.in. November 17. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://scroll.in/article/689952/a-comic-strip-uses-mughal-miniatures-to-convey-contemporary-angst