00:00Did you know a teenage slave girl once dismantled a 500-year-old Ottoman tradition and may have
00:04gotten a prince killed in the process?
00:06Her name was Roxolana.
00:08She was abducted from Ukraine sometime in the 1520s and sold into the harem of Suleiman
00:13the Magnificent, the most powerful ruler on earth at the time.
00:16She had no rights, no family, no protection, but she had something else.
00:21Within years, Suleiman was writing her poetry, he freed her, then he married her legally,
00:27something no sultan had done in over a century.
00:30Ottoman tradition kept concubines as concubines, never wives, never equals.
00:35She changed that, but the story gets darker.
00:38Suleiman had a son from before Roxolana, a brilliant military commander named Mustafa, widely loved
00:44and expected to rule.
00:45In 1553, Suleiman had him strangled.
00:48Many historians believe Roxolana engineered it, protecting her own son's path to the throne.
00:54Was she a survivor doing what she had to do?
00:55Or something more calculated than that?
00:58History never quite decided.
