Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Deccan wars, also known as the Mughal-Maratha wars, were a series of military conflicts between the Mughal Empire and the Marathas fought from 1681 to 1707. They began after the death of Maratha king Shivaji in 1680 and ended with the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707.
Aurangzeb marched to the Deccan on the 8th of September 1681 after his own son, Sultan Muhammad Akbar, sought refuge with the Maratha king Sambhaji. The prospect of a Mughal prince allying with the Marathas prompted Aurangzeb to move his entire court, household, and army south to Aurangabad.
Sambhaji was betrayed by his brother-in-law Ganoji Shirke, who guided Mughal commander Muqarrab Khan to Sangameshwar in Konkan where Sambhaji had stayed with a small group after a strategic meeting. Sambhaji was captured on the 1st of February 1689 and executed on the 11th of March 1689 at the age of 31.
Tarabai was the queen of Rajaram and daughter of Maratha commander-in-chief Hambirrao Mohite. When Rajaram died in March 1700, she took charge of the Maratha army and led the resistance against Aurangzeb for the next seven years, presiding over the Maratha counteroffensives that penetrated as far north as Bhopal and Gujarat.
The Deccan wars ended with the death of Aurangzeb from fever in 1707, without the Mughals having conquered the Maratha State. The Mughal Empire subsequently fragmented, with the Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab of Oudh, and Nawab of Bengal asserting regional independence. Aurangzeb lost about a fifth of his army over more than two decades of continuous war.
Shahu had been held captive in the Mughal court for twenty years following his father Sambhaji's execution. After Aurangzeb's death, Shahu was released, and in 1719 he received formal rights to the chauth and sardeshmukhi, taxes of 25 percent and an additional 10 percent of revenue over the six Deccan provinces, in exchange for providing 15,000 troops to the Mughal emperor.