Safiye Sultan

Safiye Sultan arrived at the Ottoman court around 1550 and rose to chief consort when Murad III took the throne in 1574, receiving the title haseki sultan within a year. His mother Nurbanu tried to break her hold, leading a faction war that ended with Safiye's exile to the Old Palace in 1580; she returned after Nurbanu's death in 1583 and became the harem's unchallenged power. When Murad died in 1595 and her son Mehmed III became sultan, she ascended to valide sultan with a personal purse triple that of the sultan himself - he made no decisions without her consent. She corresponded with Elizabeth I of England and steered foreign policy toward Venice, but her grip on state affairs triggered three rebellions in Mehmed's final years and earned her the hatred of soldiers and citizens alike. When Mehmed died in 1603, her grandson Ahmed I sent her back to the Old Palace on 9 January 1604, where she lived in forced retirement until her death in 1619.