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Constantinople, first established as the city Byzantion and known in the modern day as Istanbul, was a major city and capital of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century.

Fictional History[]

Early History[]

By early 1546, the Sultan Suleiman had become concerned that the Moslem empire would soon begin either declining or cease advancing altogether, due to the recent schism in the practice of the Moslem faith. Wanting to provide a show of strength to his rival nations without using military force, Suleiman decided to host a chess tournament in Constantinople, one which would feature the best players of all of the nations of the known world, to prove which realm had the best player. During the middle of the year, Suleiman sent out envoys to deliver the letters to the Invitational Chess Championship to 14 other nations, to request that they send a player to Constantinople for arrival during October of that year.

In the weeks before the chess championship was to begin, the people of Constantinople were gripped by fear as a killer began stalking the streets, murdering nearly a dozen people and mutilating their corpses by tearing the skin around their lips off. Six days before the tournament, Suleiman's guards captured the culprit, a simple-minded young man with a hare-lip, but rather than announce to the city's citizens that he had been captured, the Sultan decided to simply have the fiend locked away in his dungeon.

The Tournament[]

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Once the riots following the chess tournament had come to an end, Constantinople was badly damaged, and its people fractured.

Some time after she took the throne of England in 1558, Elizabeth sent a delegation of ambassadors to Constantinople to meet with Suleiman, presumably to establish some relations. These ambassadors later reported back to Elizabeth that the Ottoman Empire was no longer a threat, and that Constantinople itself had fallen into disrepair.

Notable Locations[]

Topkapi Palace[]

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Hagia Sophia[]

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Trivia[]

  • Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330, built out of the already existing city of Byzantium. The city became the capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, until the Empire fell in 1922. Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.

References[]

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