be known; but when Prince Khurram went to restore order in the Deccan in 1621, he insisted on taking his elder brother with him, and there the unfortunate Khusru died – of a fever, as was said, but such fevers sometimes happen very opportunely in the East.
Khurram, or Shah Jahan as he was already styled, now became more clearly marked than ever as the future emperor. He was the best general of his time, and had overcome the Rajputs of Udaipur and the many-headed foe in the Deccan. He was an able administrator and a cool, calculating statesman; yet he was intensely unpopular in those early days, however well he overcame the prejudice afterwards. Sir Thomas Roe found him cold and repellent, though always stately and magnificent. "I never saw so settled a countenance," he wrote, "nor any man keepe so constant a gravitie, never smiling, nor in face shewing any respect or difference of mien." There was nothing in common between Jahangir and this capable, self-contained son whom the father, depressed by his gravity, plaintively exhorted to take a little wine, "not to excess, but to promote good spirits;" and to Nur Jahan, who had formerly supported him, he became hateful, perhaps the more so since he had won her brother Asaf's favour by marrying his daughter, the lady of the Taj. Her aim was to induce her husband to name as successor his youngest son (by another wife), Shahriyar, a handsome fool who had married her daughter by her first marriage, and so to keep the dreaded Shah Jahan out of power. Jahangir himself, however, favoured his
