Roxelana, known to the people of the Ottoman Empire as Hürrem Sultan, is the Queen consort of Sultan Suleiman, and the mother of Prince Selim.
Fictional History[]
Early History[]
Born in the lands of Ruthenia, Roxelana was captured when Tartar raiders invaded her homeland, and soon sold to the Sultan of Ottoman Empire as a slave. Within the Harem, she eventually became a concubine of Sultan Suleiman. Eventually, using her beauty, wiles and intellect, Roxelana managed to become the Sultan's first wife, effectively becoming the Queen of the Ottoman Empire, and became known as Hürrem Sultan.
Roxelana's story became known to the wider world outside the Empire, and her rise from slave to queen was considered a fairytale come to life.
After giving birth to a son, Selim, Roxelana realised that he was an unlikely candidate to take over his father's throne due to being further down the line of succession, and so plotted to make her child the future Sultan. She forged a number of connections with a small number of the palace guards who worked in the Sultan's dungeon, providing them gold, women and alcohol in exchange for their loyalty. Using these guards to aid her, Roxelana engineered a series of incidents - including assassination - that removed Selim's rivals and put her son at the forefront of succeeding the throne.
In 1546, at some stage more than a few weeks prior to the Invitational Chess Championship, Roxelana began engaging in an affair with the famed wrestler Darius. Roughly two weeks before the Chess Championship, the Catholic Church's ambassador Cardinal Cardoza - whom Roxelana despised and would leave whenever the Cardinal was in audience with the Sultan - discovered the affair, and threatened to inform the Sultan if Roxelana did not agree to his demands. Fortunately for Roxelana, the favours Cardoza were not of the carnal variety since he was a sodomite; instead, he had the Queen use her influence with the dungeon guards to intervene if his priests were caught harassing boys. Roxelana did not intend for this to continue for long, and patiently began planning to take retaliatory action against Cardoza later.
The Tournament[]
Roxelana was present among Suleiman's retinue as he greeted the delegations come to accept his invitation to the chess championship. When the English delegation made their appearance, the Princess Bess noticed Roxelana and recalled her rise to power.
After the opening banquet before the Chess Tournament to welcome the various delegations, Roxelana met with Darius for another coupling, one which Elsie Fitzgerald happened to witness and later mentioned to Bess.
Roxelana sat alongside her husband as he observed the chess tournament over the next few days, but took little interest in the matches herself.
During Zaman and Vladimir's match, Roxelana made no acknowledgment of Roger Ascham and Bess when Suleiman invited them to join him, nor did she seem to listen to their conversation. When Suleiman took his leave, Ascham surprised Bess by boldly request a brief word with the Queen, which she agreed to. After some small talk about chess, Ascham asked if she was aware of Cardoza's blackmailing of Darius for their affair, one in which he extracted sexual favours from the wrestler. Though surprised, Roxelana barely reacted to the revelation, instead questioning why Ascham was asking about such matters when Suleiman had charged him with finding Cardinal Farnese's killer. Insisting that he only sought the truth, Ascham asked again, to which Roxelana responded that she did not know Cardoza had been blackmailing Darius as well as herself.
Since Farnese had been poisoned and not killed by the fiend who had been murdering people in Constantinople for some weeks, Ascham suggested that Roxelana herself may have tried to kill Cardoza but poisoned Farnese by mistake. In response to this accusation, the amused Roxelana informed Ascham that, during her rise to power, she has made certain to kill her rivals and any other annoyances without mistakes. After making a threat that, should she desire to, she could have Suleiman kill Ascham for vexing her, Roxelana then hinted that she had plans to take revenge on Cardoza later. Intuiting her meaning, Ascham apologised, and she warned the Englishman not to inform her husband of the affair. While Ascham agreed, he hinted to Roxelana that while she may have been intending to be patient in dealing with Cardoza, Darius may not have been so inclined and been the one to poison Farnese. Roxelana acknowledged this as a possibility before dismissing Ascham and Bess.
It soon became apparent that Darius had gone missing, and after considering the information that Ascham had given her about Darius being blackmailed by Cardoza, Roxelana decided to move up her own revenge plot on the Cardinal. The next day, during the match between Zaman and Brother Raul, the Queen had the dungeon guards loyal to her remove the harelipped fiend from his cell and released into the Catholic embassy, while she sent word to Cardoza to request that he meet her at the embassy. Thus, when Cardoza arrived, he was quickly attacked by the fiend, who proceeded to flay the skin from the Cardinal's jaw. The attack on the Cardinal was disrupted by Ascham, Latif and Bess, and while the fiend was killed and Cardoza left suffering from his mutilation, Suleiman had the despicable Cardinal thrown in the dungeon for his various crimes.
As Ascham relayed to Suleiman the truths behind the various deaths - including Darius, who had been discovered drowned in the palace's cisterns - he noted that the spies listening in to his delegation's room must have learned of Roxelana's affair with the wrestler when Bess informed him, and so passed this information on to the Sultan, who had ordered Darius drowned. Since this meant he didn't need to conceal Roxelana's affair from the Sultan, Ascham went on to mention how Roxelana had aimed to take revenge for the Cardinal's blackmailing of her lover by unleashing the fiend into the embassy.
Personality[]
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Skills[]
- Multilingualism: To Be Added.
- Master Tactician: To Be Added.
Trivia[]
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