Lahiri's Ashoka in Ancient India (2015) provides the documented worked case of how Kautilya's prince-management apparatus actually operated in the founding dynasty's third generation. The Ashokavadana's narrative of Susima's bald-head-slap of Bindusara's prime minister, the resulting court-faction coalition around Ashoka (the disliked-by-Bindusara younger son), the four-year fratricidal interregnum after Bindusara's death, and Ashoka's eventual accession through the coalition's choice — this is the Kautilyan prince-management problem operating empirically in the dynasty Kautilya prescribed for.
See Mauryan Succession Architecture for the full reconstruction. The Mauryan case confirms one structural feature the Kautilyan apparatus could not prevent: insult-asymmetries among elite court actors produce factional coalitions that select against the insulting heir-apparent regardless of formal succession rules. The prescriptive apparatus prescribed how to manage disaffected princes; it could not prescribe against an heir-apparent's insulting behavior toward senior officials whose support he required.
Cross-references: Ashoka's Disliked-Son Status and the Taxila Test for the frontier-rotation outcome (Bindusara may have sent Ashoka to Taxila to engineer his failure; the mission succeeded despite under-supply; the disliked son returned credentialed); Mauryan Prince Education and the Crab Pattern for the broader curriculum-and-distrust framework.