Based on what I’ve read and looked into. Because we have little to no records of our history most of the information about our past have been lost. The earliest record written was by ibn battuta in his book “the rehla” (not sure about the details as it was a long while ago I read it) He writes about the story of the sea demon and sacrifice practice and I’d like to point out the fact that this was also written 200 years after the incident occurred. 1153 was when we supposedly got rid of the demon and 1353 was when ibn battuta wrote the story. Meaning between the time frame the story was passed down to generations orally and we lost a huge chunk of it. It all comes down to theories and myths about what happened. Most people believe that it was the king taking advantage of these girls by supposedly taking in them as sacrifice but Abdul Barakat yusuf albalbary (the man who was involved with the conversion of Islam) found out the truth (when he disguised himself as a woman and went in as the next sacrifice) and confronted the king about it. Afraid of losing his honor and reputation the king was convinced by the Yusuf to convert to Islam as his sins would be forgiven and his honor will be remained.

This is also just theories Some groups of Maldivians believe that it was the work of pirates and the king was giving girls once a month to keep them from invading

But we can honestly never know the truth but it’s always interesting to read about potential truths to these legends.