Rather than reading Ayodhya as the fixed location where the Ramayana plays out, this essay shows how Ayodhya becomes an object that adaptations repurpose to reposition their meanings. It begins not with the post-1991 novel but with Valmiki's Ayodhya: the poet builds the city with gates, walls, granaries, and streets in Canto V of the Balakanda before his tale even begins. Against that background, I read Banker's Prince of Ayodhya, Tripathi's Scion of Ikshvaku, Joseph's The Vigil, and Arni's The Missing Queen, tracing how each adapts a shared layout while staying in conversation with it. Using Barthes's naturalisation and Genette's palimpsest, and drawing on media-studies and genre scholarship, I then read the Ayodhya that follows the Ram Mandir's January 2024 consecration as a further instance of the same technique. Across text and city, Ayodhya works as a site of negotiation over political power, memory, and narrative validation.