AnjaniManda8
Sultana.
The word could mean many things in an Ottoman court: a daughter of the dynasty, a woman born into privilege, a noblewoman whose name carried the weight of blood and inheritance. But with that name came expectations. A sultana was not merely raised to live beautifully; she was raised to understand that her life belonged, in part, to the dynasty that had given it meaning.
Many sultanas blossomed beneath the domes and gardens of the Ottoman court. Many tulips opened beneath the imperial sun, and many withered before anyone remembered their names.
Some were given ordinary political marriages. Some found extraordinary ones. Some married once, some twice, some more-for such was often the destiny of an Ottoman sultana: to strengthen alliances, secure loyalties, and carry the interests of her family into another household.
And an Ottoman sultana, before she belonged to her husband's household, belonged to her father's. Before her father's, to her brothers'. And before all of them, to her mother's.
But what becomes of a sultana who has no mother's household to shelter her?
What becomes of a girl who grows into womanhood beneath the protection of a brother who loves her so fiercely that she becomes the joy of his heart, his little one, his first child?
What happens when the court begins to understand just how much that sultana is worth to the Sultan?
And what happens when this most cherished of women falls in love with the one man she was never supposed to love?
This is the story of Şemşahnûr Sultan-poet, princess, daughter of a forgotten household, and the woman who would discover that sometimes the most dangerous thing a sultana could possess was not power, wealth, or influence...
but a heart of her own.