Ask Lemmy

Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana). She was born a Ruthenian (modern-day Ukrainian) commoner, captured by Crimean Tatars in a slave raid as a teenager, and taken to Constantinople, where she entered the imperial harem. She eventually became Sultan Suleiman’s favorite concubine. In a complete break with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman freed and married her, making her his legal wife. Until then, sultans generally married freeborn foreign noblewomen, if they married at all, and had children with slave concubines instead. Hürrem went on to become one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history and the first of the prominent women of the Sultanate of Women. She’s widely considered the first, and perhaps the most powerful, Haseki Sultan. It’s probably the most fairy tale-like rags-to-riches story I’ve ever come across.