Who is Gandhari?

The blindfold

Gandhari was a princess of Gandhara, a kingdom in the far northwest. When she learned that the man she was to marry, Dhritarashtra, was blind, she took a cloth, folded it, and tied it over her own eyes. She wore it for the rest of her life, choosing to share everything her husband could not see.

Her brother Shakuni came with her to Hastinapura, and he stayed.

A hundred sons

Gandhari carried her pregnancy for two years. When she finally gave birth, it was to a hard lump of flesh. Vyasa divided it into a hundred and one pieces and placed each in a jar of ghee, and from those jars came a hundred sons, led by Duryodhana, and one daughter.

A good woman with a terrible son

Gandhari is one of the most respected characters in the epic. She told Duryodhana plainly that he was wrong, and she blessed him before the war only with the words "where there is righteousness, there is victory," not with victory itself.

How Gandhari’s story ends (spoilers)

After the war she walked the battlefield among the bodies of her sons. In her grief she turned on Krishna, who she believed could have stopped it all, and cursed him: his own clan would destroy itself, just as hers had. Krishna accepted the curse, and it came true. Gandhari spent her last years in the forest with Dhritarashtra and Kunti, and died there with them.