Players
i) ChandraBabu Naidu/CBN: You all know who he is, but is many times put on the defence by calling him a back stabber, which he had done to NTR, president of TDP. - from Chittor district. Lost the farmer base because of his policies which are generally urban.

ii) NTR (CBN's father in law): (postumous) cine hero, former CM, brought the equation of telugu pride into politics, founder of TDP.

iii) KCR: founder of TRS (telangana rashtra samiti), has been a continuous agitator since 2000. only agenda is telangana. not even development of telangana is on agenda. Was deputy speaker of assembly in TDP, but because of no ministry, floated TRS.

iv) YSR: (postumous) the only strong CM to come from congress (after JVR in 1978) in 30 years, developed a mass base and farmers base. died in a heli crash 15 months ago. known factionist and corrupt. a christian and propped his son in law to be a EJ, to skim off money from those sources.- from Kadapa

v) Jagan: (YSR's son): trying to get hold of CMs post by living off YSRs legacy, got 150 mla's signature(required 145) for it but Sonia G said no. This whole year he spent on "odarpu"/consoling yatra, to console all those who committed **"suicides"** on hearing YSR's death. Came out of congress recently and will be establishing a new Party soon. Established "Sakshi" newspaper and tv news channel which basically is his mouth piece. He orchestrated his own exit from congress by publishing an anti Sonia piece in his news channel. Sakshi has risen to a position where it competes with "eenadu" newspaper, which was the dominant newspaper since 1980's.

vi) Rosiah: the chair warmer CM after YSR's death. Couldnt control telangana movement nor Jagan. Was known an able adminstrator before as finance minister for more than 10 years and strong tongue in assembly but lost it in these 15 months.

vii) N Kiran Kumar Reddy/KKR: the new CM hoisted by high command to control Jagan, but even his cabinet formation became a joke as his ministers refused to take the portfolios and required high command's intervention. was a YSR supporter, but hey it is politics.

viii) Ramoji Rao: Owner of eenadu newspaper and E TV botique of channels. The newspaper pawned every other newspaper in telugu until Sakshi with YSR and govt's full weight behind Sakshi brought it down from a monopolistic position to a major player level. Lost some control over them to a foreign company in the full on fight with YSR, when YSR brought out some details over Ramoji's finance company Margadarshi and shut it down. Generally takes an anti-congress position with support waving for TDP.
Bit Players/ Jokers of the Pack:
i) Chiranjeevi: film actor. wanted to emulate NTR, but won 20 mlas instead of NTR's 200. Said no to telangana after the elections during last year disturbances, so lost his party's telangana base completely, such that apart from hyderabad, cant visit anywhere else. is tending towards congress. Reports that congress high command wanted to take him in already, but some congress seniors asked to wait. When Jagan weans away some mlas from congress, his 20 mlas might become crucial.

ii) Kaka: Congress senior dalit leader and supporter of telangana
iii) JayaPrakash Narayan /JP: founder of loksatta. Espouses a clean corruption free cause. has a base in highly educated elite. he is the only mla from his party.
iv) BJP: has some base in hyderabad and thats about it.
Politics History:
Andhra Pradesh is usually divided into three Parts.
Telangana (9 districts has hyderabad), Coastal Andhra (sometimes abbreviated as coasta(kosta)/ andhra -10 districts) and Rayalseema (abbreviated as seema, 4 districts).
Some parts of kosta are agriculturally rich due to delta regions of krishna and godavari rivers. Those delta districts are east godavari, west godavari, krishna and guntur. The north kosta/ or in the map of AP, the wire extension in the right is backward and tribal and are actually part of the tribal landscape of chattisgarh and orissa.
Seema is an arid region with minimal rainfall. This region is famous for factional fueds. Rakhta Charitra by RGV is an almost realistic take of the politics of the situation. The big sir in the movie was YSR himself.
Telangana has rainfall but is part of deccan plateau (height is higher) and water drains away. So to have projects, most of the water has to be pumped to heights instead of using gravity. This is a cause of lot of heart burn in Telangana, as they can see the water but cannot use it. Godavari remains the most underutilized river in the whole of south india due to this reason.
Telangana was ruled by Nizam as a part of hyderabad kingdom, whereas kosta and seema formed part of the madras state at the time of independence.
After independence, the telugu parts of madras state, i.e. seema and kosta leaders wanted out. These leaders reached an agreement within themselves to give capital to seema and highcourt to kosta and started agitating. Nehru didnt want to give it. Potti Sri Ramulu did a hunger strike and died doing the fast. Nehru couldnt handle the agitations and declared a telugu state. It was the first state to be formed on language basis. "Andhra Rashtram" was the state formed in 1953 with Kurnool in seema as capital.
Now seeing Andhra Rashtram, the telugu parts of hyderabad state also wanted out, but were afraid to join fearing domination. So a "gentlemen's agreement" was reached, between the leaders of the two regions(andhra rashtram and telangana) that basically laid out the conditions like deputy CM should always be from the other part as CM and so on. Thus "Andhra Pradesh" present state was born in 1956.
Usually the telangana agitations are born when a telangana leader is out of job. The first agitations started out in 1969 around 13 years after AP. Indira brought a Telangana leader as CM, PVN (yup the same PVN) to control it. He couldnt suppress it and president's rule came. After 2 years Jalagam Vengal Rao, came in, who crushed the agitations and mostly by taking in the out of job telangana leader.
In the meantime, there was also a agitation in which Kosta wanted out. I dont remember the details, but it also petered out after some time.
The last of these agitations were in 1974-75 until KCR found himself jobless in 2001.
In the mean time, what has happened is, with hyderabad being the capital, even the kosta and seema public and industrialists started building their lives in hyderabad. Before these people used to go Chennai/Madras as part of Madras state.
The telugu film industry is one such example. It has always been dominated by people from Seemaandhra (Shorcut for Rayalseema + coastal andhra). It started during the time of Madras state when telugu, tamil, malayalam and kannada films all were made in Madras. The industry shifted to hyderabad in 1970s-80s, but the players remained the same. and the same thing continued in many industries.
Hyderabad is a curious entity in the middle of all this. Remember it was part of the Nizam rule. During that time, obviously the control was in the hands of muslims, not the telugu speaking. Muslims even today form 25% of hyderabad. The shift in control was complete from them was complete even demographically (except in old city) in the 90s by which time, even costa and seema people had started thinking of it as their capital as well.
Thus you see that telangana has good support for it in north telangana, medium support in south telangana and no support in hyderabad which is supposed to be telangana's capital. To counter this, telangana politicians have started talking to the costa and seema origin people in hyderabad as "settlers" and many times advocated violence against these people.
This in a nutshell is AP's politics as of today