Hurrem Sultan

Born around 1505 in Ruthenia to an Orthodox family, she was captured by Crimean Tatars and sold into Constantinople's imperial harem. She became Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's favorite, and he broke with all precedent by freeing and marrying her - sultans had only wed foreign noblewomen, if anyone at all, and never former slaves. She bore him at least six children, five of them sons, violating the old rule that each concubine could give the sultan only one male heir; her son Selim II would inherit the throne, making her the ancestor of every sultan who followed. Their correspondence, hidden until the nineteenth century, revealed a partnership: during Suleiman's campaigns she sent him love letters laced with political intelligence and warnings of rebellion, intervened in diplomacy with Poland, and exchanged embroidered gifts and official letters with foreign royalty. She commissioned major public works, including mosques and bathhouses that still stand. She died in Constantinople in April 1558 and was laid in a mausoleum beside the site where Suleiman would join her eight years later.