Haseki Zeynep Sultan
Born an English Princess, the formerly named Jane Tudor was abducted by Crimean Tatars while traveling through Italy on her way home from fostering in Rome at the young age of fourteen. The young princess was sold to the Topkapi...
Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.
Rumi
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Returning to his Valide's chamber, Suleiman collected his wife and brought her to his private chamber, leaving his children with his mother to watch over. He needed his wife, as he grieved the loss of his son all over again, now that he knew that it was Mahidevran who took his life instead of illness. He didn't know how he was going to tell Gülfem Hatun about this, but hopefully, the news that the people responsible were being executed for their crimes will appease her.
The couple was currently on the terrace, with Zeynep sitting on the couch while he laid his head on her lap. She was currently massaging his temples as he had a pounding headache from the stress of the past couple of days. She would periodically lean down and kiss his brow, showing him nothing but love and support as he processed the information that he learned that day. He couldn't believe that a woman he had a child with would deprive someone else of their own. Physically, he was exhausted as he wanted to do nothing more than sleep. Mentally, however, he couldn't help but think of the last time he saw Mahmud before he fell ill before he was poisoned. When he helped him and Ahmed practice their archery out in the gardens, the large smile on his face from spending time with his father and favorite brother.
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Mahmud was a precious child but was born early and had a weaker constitution compared to his later children. Gülfem was so cautious with him, though he loved going to the Harem and playing with the other concubines. When Zeynep met him, he was a baby in his mother's arms two years after she joined the Harem of Şehzade Suleiman, and six months after she became an ikbal. She was the first to congratulate the young mother on her child, giving her some warm fabrics to make clothes for him as it was winter.
When Ahmed was born a year later, the two boys grew up to be as thick as thieves, always playing together while their mothers watched on fondly. When the older boy got sick in 1518, after spending time outdoors with his father, her son was inconsolable as he wasn't able to see his best friend, his older brother, just in case what Mahmud had was contagious. They had hoped he would get better, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. On October 29, 1518, a few months after the twins were born, the young boy passed away in his sleep. And Gülfem was never the same.
Something in her broke the day her son's small coffin passed her in the Harem on his journey to the Bayezid II Mosque in Istanbul. Zeynep remembered the grieving woman collapsing in her arms, reaching out to the passing aghas carrying the coffin, not wanting to see her son leave her. She didn't want to face the reality that her sunshine, her whole world was gone.
Suleiman felt guilty thinking back during that time, knowing he wasn't a good lover and friend to the mother of his first son, the woman who made him a father for the first time. He couldn't face her, feeling like it was his fault that he got sick, and wondered if she had blamed him too. So he stayed away from her, allowing Zeynep and his mother to be there for her in his stead. But now that he thought about it, Mahidevran never seemed sympathetic to his pain when he was with her for the few times he laid with her after she gave birth to Mustafa.
