[4] The specific details of the battle and its immediate aftermath are notoriously difficult to reconstruct in light of the distinctly contrarian narratives present across primary sources.

[7][8] Rama Raya, after his installation of a patrimonial state and emerging as the ruler, adopted a political strategy of benefiting from the internecine warfare among the multiple successors of the Bahmani Sultanate, and it worked well for about twenty years of his reign.

[4][5] There exist multiple contemporary chronicles (literary as well as historical) documenting the war:[5][12] The details of the battle and immediate aftermath are often distinctly contrarian and even accounting for biases, reconstruction is difficult, if not impossible.

[4] Popular accounts and older scholarship describe Vijayanagara falling to ruins, in light of the widespread desecration of sacred topography; however, this view has been contested.

[10][21] But faced with succession disputes, rebellions by multiple local chieftains—primarily Telugu Nayak houses—who did not wish for the reemergence of any central authority,[c] and continuous conflicts with the Bijapur Sultanate—who might have been invited by Rama Raya's son—, it moved southwards before disintegrating in the late 1640s.

In support of his position, Eaton cites a number of lines of evidence, including the multiple alliances of Rama Raya with various Muslim rulers at different points in time, (motivated by political rather than religious factors); the thorough perfusion of Persian Islamate culture within the Vijaynagara Kingdom, as evident from court sanction and patronage of Islamic art, architecture and culture; and the strategic alliances of Rama Raya's heirs (the Aravidus) with the heirs of the Deccan Sultans that fought at Talikota.

[4][6] Romila Thapar, Burton Stein, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam, and Stewart N. Gordon have concurred with this perspective on the basis of similar analyses.