Narathihapate

He eventually submitted to Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty in January 1287 in exchange for a Mongol withdrawal from northern Burma.

But when the king was assassinated six months later by his son Thihathu, the Viceroy of Prome, the 250-year-old Pagan Empire broke apart into multiple petty states.

According to scholarship, he was certainly an ineffective ruler but unfairly scapegoated by the chronicles for the fall of the empire, whose decline predated his reign, and in fact had been "more prolonged and agonized".

[8] Even when his father became king in 1251, Khwe-Chi was not in line for the throne; the position belonged to his half-brother Thihathu, the eldest son of the chief queen Thonlula.

The court led by the powerful chief minister Yazathingyan did not accept a head-strong Thihathu, and placed their preferred candidate, Khwe Chi, whom they believed they could control, on the throne on 6 May 1256.

Like his father and grandfather before him, he too failed to fix the depleted royal treasury, which had been deteriorating for years because the continued growth of tax-free religious landholdings.

The Mongol army of the Yuan dynasty in 1275–76 consolidated the Pagan–Yunnan borderlands as part of their drive to close off escape routes of the Song refugees, and in the process went on to occupy a Burmese vassal state in present-day Dehong Prefecture).

The Mongol troops reached as far south as Kaungsin, which guarded the Bhamo Pass, the gateway into the Irrawaddy, before retreating in 1278 due to excessive heat.

With Martaban (Mottama) also in rebellion, the breakaway of Pegu meant the entire eastern half of Lower Burma was now in revolt.

[13][23] The Mongol commanders at Hanlin, who had organized northern Burma as a protectorate named Zhengmian (Chinese: 征緬; Wade–Giles: Cheng-Mien) agreed to a ceasefire but insisted on a full submission.

[13] A tentative agreement was reached among the negotiators on 3 March 1286; Central Burma would now be organized as a sub-province of Mianzhong (Chinese: 緬中; Wade–Giles: Mien-Chung), and the Burmese king would send a formal embassy to the emperor.

[24] After a long deliberation, in June 1286, the Burmese king decided to agree to the terms, and sent an embassy led by Shin Ditha Pamauk, the chief primate, to the emperor's court.

The Burmese delegation formally acknowledged Mongol suzerainty of their kingdom, and agreed to pay annual tribute tied to the agricultural output of the country.

To refuse would have meant death by the sword, and with a prayer on his lips that in all his future existences "may no male-child be ever born to him again", the king swallowed the poison and died.

The royal chronicles paint an especially harsh description of the king, portraying him as "an ogre" and "glutton" who was "great in wrath, haughtiness and envy, exceeding covetous and ambitious.

"[30] According to scholarship, he was certainly an ineffective ruler but unfairly scapegoated by the chronicles for the fall of the empire, whose descent predated his reign and in fact had been "more prolonged and agonized.