A nation almost trashed by a bloody inheritance; a family rife with murderous plots. How did Sri Lanka ever survive the poisonous legacy of one of its greatest kings?

Who was the man who rescued the Sinhalese state from near utter ruin – and how did he overcome all the odds to do it?

How did Sri Lanka’s kings ever spring back from the Chola devastation to reclaim the Sinhalese state?

What makes elephants so quintessentially Sri Lankan – and what have they to do with its last great ancient kingdom - Polonnaruwa?

The destruction of the 1500-year-old Anuradhapura kingdom fell due – but was it destroyed by problems of its own making – or by a force so overwhelming that no power could ever hope to withstand it?

The Lambakanna king, Sena II, pulled victory from disaster. Sri Lanka became one of the dominant powers in the Indian Ocean. So how did it get from there to the doors of desolation in barely 125 years?

How was it that, even as life seemed at its easiest, the plush and kind middle years of later Lambakanna rule almost came to an abrupt halt - courtesy of an Indian invasion?

King Manavanna was to restore the fortunes of the returning Lankbranaka dynasty, and his succeeding sons were to rule as if the kingdom merited nothing but the best. But was the Anuradhapura kingdom really that safe?

As the Lambakanna kings retook their throne for a second innings, how was it that rice, that most ordinary of all crops, was to power the last glorious golden age of the one-island state?

What was it in the fatal combination of new money, old suspicions, religious strife, mercenaries and regicide that brought the last Moriyan kings to ruin?

Family dramas nearly unsettled the first Moriyan kings until King Moggallana took over. Or so it seemed. What was it about the choices he made that so brutally undermined his successors?

Famed for building the 8th wonder of the ancient world in Asia, what drove the great Moriyan king, Kashyapa, to plunge a sword into his own body?

After decades of occupation and state madness, a great new Anuradhapura king set about putting things right. But how did he end up as the poster boy of the most notorious assassinations in world history?

What is it about Sri Lanka’s lion – cherished by the Moriyan kings at Sigiriya and elsewhere – that so perfectly captures one of the country's most critical national traits?

Water flowed, and the kingdom functioned as the long, late Indian summer of Lambakarna rule drew to its end. Or did it? What drove the dynasty to destruction and laid the land open to invaders?

Regicide vied with restitution as the Lambakanna dynasty moved into its middle age – but just how well did the state survive these years of make-do, mayhem and murder?

After the ruinous excesses of the last Vijayan kings, Sri Lanka’s Lambakanna were to rule for two periods, the first lasting 369 years. But how did they rescue the state from ruin?

It was the mastery of water that powered the Anuradhapuran Kingdom, but how did its first Lambakarna kings ensure so rapid a development of its technology as to superpower their domain?

It was a counterfeit lookalike king who presided over the bloodbath collapse of the Vijayan dynasty that had ruled Sri Lanka for over 600 years. How did things ever come to such a pass?

As a third and fourth Tamil invasion subjugated Sri Lanka, who were the feisty avenging kings who rescued it from the suspicion that things are never so bad that they can't get any worse?

Barely 300 years into its nationhood, Sri Lanka was invaded twice. Why was it that no one saw the turmoil that lay ahead, and who were its conquerors?

Two great Sri Lankan kings ruled in quick succession – Pandu Kabhaya and Devanampiya Tissa. How did this double windfall hasten the tiny kingdom to burst into a great state?

How did Sri Lanka, barely 7 decades old, survive the death of its founding father, Vijaya, and its first recorded civil war, which erupted over the death of Vijaya’s nephew?

Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch established a family that would rule for over half a millennium, and a nation that flourishes to this day. But how did that all begin?

From people to orchids, lions to river fish – how was Sri Lanka first settled? And what happened to its earliest inhabitants?

The simple fact that Sri Lanka is an island has determined the country’s character; for “islands,” as Richard Dawkins remarked, “are natural workshops of evolution.” But how did this all happen?

In almost every aspect of its existence, Sri Lanka defies logic - yet still it spins a potent and inexplicable magic. So how exactly did it get to be like this? What makes Sri Lanka unique?