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mc-critical · 3 years ago

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Who do you think, out of the entire MC franchise, would you say was the best mother? I would honestly have to say Mahidevran since she was so nurturing and compassionate towards Mustafa (I loved their scenes together) and you could tell Mustafa’s safety always came first to her. What are your thoughts?

No mother of the franchise is perfect and as I’ve said before, there is no way mothers in the harem can develop a completely healthy (as we know it) relationship with their children. Still, I appreciate the various types of mothers we saw in MC/K and I usually love the scenes they have with their sons and/or daughters, since they enrich the characters and give them more humanity and depth.

I think I’ll also put Mahidevran as the best mother of the franchise. To be fair, one important writing advantage she possesses over the rest is that her relationship with Mustafa is probably the most fleshed out mother-son relationship of the entire franchise - we saw it develop in the span of four seasons and we saw every possible side of it. Mahidevran’s motherhood is a very vital aspect of her character: her love for Mustafa has always been there ever since her introduction and after she lost SS, Mustafa was all she had left. Everyone around her encouraged her to focus only on him and his upbringing. That didn’t seem so easy for a person who had yet to adapt to the immediate changes of her life and to accept the loss of a person that has undoubtedly been very important to her, but Mustafa has been there with her in every step of the way and the support they gave each other as early as S01 was very profound and human and I couldn’t help but tear up many times. And most remarkably, when she put her past in Manisa behind, when she truly focused the most on Mustafa, Mahidevran’s motherhood became a powerful indicator of her character development and I truly can’t think of another mother who evolved this beautifully.

Mahidevran has very strong motherly instincts outside of Mustafa and I loved how she saved Mehmet, the care she took of Mihrimah during the Janissary rebellion and the understanding she provided when Mehmet was struck with the arrow in E75. Hürrem also had equally strong motherly instincts during the same rebellion as well and I admire her for it, but one could argue it’s a little more surprising for Mahidevran to show them in such a way - back in S01, pre-E16, she didn’t seem to show signs that she could take care of the children of her enemy like that. Not many people would expect a person who has wished Hürrem’s death in her childbirths to do that at all. And yet she did. Once she saved Mehmet, we found out that she didn’t want the children’s deaths at all, even though she did make an attempt on Hürrem’s life when she was pregnant out of hurt and desperation. In fact, Mahidevran’s hate for Hürrem seems to be unbreakable, to know no bounds, except when it concerns the children. Once that happens, this is the only time she’s ready to let go. These are the only times she could ever understand Hürrem. The one scene where she herself went to her in good terms, to the point of her trying to return her ring, happened after she found out Hürrem protected Mustafa. It is clear that children and motherhood are important to Mahidevran, so important they can become the most important things in her life, so important she can leave her enmity with Hürrem for that and that alone. And conversely, her hatred for Hürrem reached the strongest peaks when it concerned Mustafa, as well: once he was exiled to Amasya and once he died, respectively, giving her a whole new motive to live and seek justice from the hands of God.

The advices (E55 and E56 aside) she gave to Mustafa are Mahidevran at her most perceptive - she speaks both from heart and experience and does her best at nurturing and caring for her son, understanding his struggles the way no one else could. Mustafa seeking vast support from everyone comes as much from her as it does from Ibrahim (I’m referring to this scene in particular) and while that sure is a double-edged sword when it comes to Süleiman’s opinion, it did motivate Mustafa to give his all to be the best heir he can be and gave him a certain upper hand over his brothers. Her advices are also her at her most decisive - showing that at this point, she knows what she’s talking about and can easily sense danger and warn accordingly. She has gained a fair sense of paranoia when it comes to his safety (understandably enough) and that is a factor of her advices as well, but it proves that she can be careful, that she isn’t as naive as she may look and that it’s not that easy to deceive her as it may have seemed.

Interestingly enough, before Mahidevran fell out of love with SS, she was fighting with her own loss and winning SS back and her hurt over it may seem to have taken primacy over the advantages she has as a mother. In E10, her first thought was Mustafa when SS appeared dead. Even in E55, she begins to look at her own possible advantageous position that comes with Mustafa only after Valide reminded her that she has her son. The falling out of love has started to the point she can openly think of her own future, but her feelings for SS were still conflicted and she could freely remember all the good times with him and lament them before she considered standing up. Her arc was moving back and forth between Mustafa, Süleiman and her own independence before she completed the full transition and had the chance to embrace the comparatively calmer environment and take full hand on Mustafa. Which is why Mustafa not being a priority at all is exactly Mahidevran at her worst. Due to her will for revenge, it was him she detached from to the point of her not wanting to go to Manisa with him in order to finish her battle with Hürrem in the form of ruling the harem. That was the only moment where she considerably detached herself from one of her best virtues and arguably did the most mistakes, culminating in a definite loss, for that moment. But we can say this was a learning experience for her, the cathartic process that granted her an entirely new push in strength and made her both a better character and a better mother than ever.

Yes, Mahidevran isn’t the perfect mother and she could inadvertently put Mustafa in danger due to her own personal pride being wounded (E48), her tears that could sometimes turn into breakdowns (E23) definitely affected him a lot to the point he was constantly willing to defend her, which, admittedly, could cause trouble (once again E48), but I could understand all this, because when everyone else doesn’t seem to alleviate your pain in the best way in your eyes, you become helpless when you have nobody else to confide in. For Mahidevran Mustafa was the only one she could truly confide in and he was her only tangible source of comfort when she’s pained to the point she can’t think rationally, in a way. There were definetly moments where she was ready to assert her own power through him, involving him in her fights. But once again, these things were stuff she developed out of, now indeed considering his safety first and foremost, telling him to stay away from any and all danger and to not provoke his enemies in any way. She became ready to eliminate all threats to him by herself and that’s also why she commited her biggest sin in the series: it was in a desperate, urgent attempt to protect Mustafa that she killed Mehmet. She thought only about him then, never about herself. (in E101 we see that Mustafa isn’t in the best condition after being exiled in Amasya to the point he was willing to not let anyone close to him and commit suicide and Mahidevran knew this, giving orders to Taşlicalı through Fidan to not leave him alone while she’s gone. With that I wanna thank Joanna for noticing this a while back! <33) She was ready to do anything and everything for him. Her path as a mother is heartfelt and fascinating to me.

I find Ayşe Hafsa to also be a very good mother, though. She was also the most notable in her advices and perceptiveness she delivered to SS. It was for a reason he thought of her as his conscience and seeing how he spiraled down massively after her absence, she may have been a huge part of his justice system, even though there were times where he disregarded her. She grounded him and told him which lines he shouldn’t cross just as she provided emotional support when he left for campaigns or went in the divan.

Her and Hatice are probably the best mother and daughter relationship on the franchise (Gevherhan and Kosem come as a close second), for there we saw genuine love and genuine support, as well. She fell ill precisely for the thought of her daughter’s pain after she learns about Ibrahim and Nigar. Hafsa is more tradition-bound and that may cause her to disregard her children’s wishes or cross paths with them quite a few times, but her motherhood is certainly one of her good qualities, especially when it shined through her flanderization in S02.

Despite of her cold pragmatism, Şah seemed to be a very good mother, all things considered. She was able to put Esmahan's wishes above her own by agreeing to try marrying her to Bali Bey and most importantly, sparing Lütfi Pasha for her sake alone.

I don’t consider Hürrem to be a totally bad mother by any means, especially how, as I mentioned, her motherly instincts can be as strong as Mahidevran’s, but there are factors where she falls a little short for me. One of them is screentime, to be brutally honest: we simply didn’t get much of her relationship with Mehmet for this reason, except for the schematic praise, hope for him to be the padisah and her not allowing him to go to the sanjack. We didn’t get much of her with Mihrimah in S03, either, even though their S03A relationship is the best part of it for me. I love her relationships with Selim, Bayezid and Cihangir much, much more writing-wise and my favourite point of Hürrem as a mother, as I mentioned once, is the S02B Cihangir arc. There we see her genuine concern over him that puts her motherhood to the forefront, we see how terrified she is of his incoming operation and that’s Hürrem at her most emotionally honest overall (and I wish we had more of that!). I love her protective mama bear attitude. I love how she managed to keep her children away from conflict in the earlier seasons (with the exception of little Mihrimah in S02A) and that certainly gave her some advantage.

Her problems as a mother, however, appeared later down the line and managed to prevail, with her mishandling of the Selim and Bayezid conflict being her biggest failing in the whole show for me. Her fixation on her enemies, or Mustafa in particular, dominated in how she dealt with her children in S04, to the point she moulded them for the political game, made pragmatic decisions she explained far too late (like why she sent Selim in Manisa), condemned them for their mistakes more than necessary (Mihrimah) and attempted to make them fully fixated on one goal, to no avail. I get her motives - Mehmet’s death empowered her will for revenge in an enormous way and she is now even more desperate to win the fight of her life that would help her make them respect her, ,,kneel to her feet’’ and defeat them all, but that way she had to make her children fully commit to that same fight, putting their personal feelings and desires behind and sometimes overlooking their own problems. She loves her children a lot and the realization that she had to choose between Selim and Bayezid broke her to pieces, but some problems manage to outweigh that. She’s an interesting, relatable in this time period, mother, but I certainly wouldn’t call her the best one of the franchise.

We didn’t see much of Nurbanu as a mother, but she certainly seemed to love Murad, but show strictness as well. We also saw how ruthless she can get when it comes to the survival of her and her son when she was about to kill Defne's kids.

Defne is a very nurturing mother, from what we saw. She's probably shown as a nurturer the most when it comes to all the mothers and her love and protection of her children is warm, yet heartbreaking, especially because she's ready to take risks she never had when Nurbanu comes for them. That scene was the peak of her removing her loyalties to her in general.

I wouldn’t compare the dynastic sultanas like Hatice or Gevherhan as mothers, simply because they’re not very often shown as such. Hatice wanted to have children so badly, but we didn’t see her much with her living children, which is solely a writing issue. Gevherhan isn’t seen as a mother that much to comment on it, either, even though yes, she clearly loves her children.

Safiye is another deal: she loves her children, but keeping her power has always taken primacy over them. Though it’s not to be denied that their deaths are moments of big vulnerability for her and indicators for the last ounces of her humanity - once Fahriye died, she seemed to have lost some of that humanity. Once Iskender died, she was finally willing to let go. But this humanity in her motherly relationships couples with her moments of disregarding them: as seen with Fahriye and especially, Humasah. There was a hinted resentment of Humasah’s of Safiye, and I’m sure there was a reason for it, despite of Humasah listening to her still in some cases.

Handan is a comparatively good mother. She also tries her best to protect Ahmet from stronger enemies and he is the reason she had fought this war against Safiye and Halime and ended up outranking them. One part she commited suicide was perhaps because she didn’t see any sign of acceptance in Ahmet of her love with Dervish, one of the few things that made her happy in the cage that is the castle. Getting such strong disapproval from her own son… it hurt.

I see Kösem as a mother that cares about her children, but is often forced to couple them with the needs of the country or caves in to the necessity to represent the traditions, as well as the country. That’s why she ended both Ibrahim and Murat, no matter how much she didn’t want to. Her whole arc was about the dilemma of representing the state and her own motherly persona and she fought the fratricide law so hardly, for no one to endure their children being killed no more. She knows best what is like to lose children and that also motivated her in doing what she considered right in ruling the empire, trying her best to stop any failings.

I elaborated in the past on why I think Halime and Gülbahar are very toxic mothers and I stand by these opinions.

I know the ask was about who is the best mother in the franchise, but I want to mention, for the second time, the worst mother in the franchise, is Turhan. Oh god, Turhan. She is the worst mother both character-wise and writing-wise - nor have we seen her show any affection for Mehmed at all, nor have we had that much time to see it, either. She is a one-dimensional thematic symbol, nearly devoid of vulnerability or humanity, and (even though that fits thematically, except for her relationship with her son) that also includes her son.

#magnificent century #muhteşem yüzyıl #muhtesem yuzyil #ask #stuffandthangs

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