#and include as many tangents and wives and children as possible

[riderheart]

definitely not typing that thinking about how relaxing it is when i sit down and do my lil royal family tree akkfkgk

[militant-holy-knight]

The Perverse Habits of Mehmed the Conqueror

What they don’t want you to know about Mehmed the Conqueror

Even if you know nothing about Turkish history, there is a good chance you at least heard about Mehmed II as he was the Sultan who conquered the city of Constantinople, ended the Medieval Era and was the arch-enemy of Vlad the Impaler (the real-life inspiration for Count Dracula). Unsurprisingly, he is a national hero in Turkey and revered in some parts of the Muslim world (not to the same level as Muhammad’s companions or Imam Hussein) primarily for fulfilling a Islamic prophecy that Constantinople would be conquered. He happens to be also hailed by some (incidentally left-leaning) Westerners as one of the greatest Islamic rulers in history for his tolerance, genius and yadayadayada... But as always some things get omitted and probably for good reason so that people wouldn’t know...

The Ottomans differed from European monarchies in terms of succession and marriage. Traditionally, kings were expected to marry among the nobility and the throne would be passed down from father to eldest son, while the Ottoman sultans per their heirs were chosen as the most capable to rule. Mehmed’s grandfather and namesake had fought a civil war with his brothers after their own father Bayezid I was captured in battle by the Mongol warlord Timur the Lame and dying in captivity. This period is known as the Ottoman Interregnum.

As such, he implemented a policy of judicial royal fratricide which commanded that everytime a Sultan emerged to the throne, his brothers would be executed by strangulation. While one can argue that infighting didn’t necessarily began with Mehmed II himself, he made part of it’s system. Even though the ruling sultan could give some advantage to his favored heir over the others to claim the throne, literally every single one of his children (including those born of slave concubines) could possibly claim the throne for themselves. Such was the case of Mehmed’s own apparent heir Cem who was outwitted and ended up exiled by his brother Bayezid who became sultan instead and killed all their other brothers. Cem tried to gain support from Europeans even promising perpetual peace between Christendom and the Ottoman Empire if they helped regain his throne, but he ultimately died of pneumonia. His surviving family stayed in Europe and converted to Christianity, being forever barred from the line of succession.

This is the reasons why the Ottoman dynasty (known as House of Osmanoğlu) is relatively small today despite being one of the longest ones in existence, even compared to relatively younger House of Braganza which governed Brazil and Portugal, with the Brazilian branch having cadet lines of Vassouras and Petrópolis. Ultimately, this practice became so barbaric and threatened the integrity of the Ottoman dynasty that after the largest fratricide massacre perpetrated by Mehmed III for having killed 19 of his siblings that his successor Ahmed I done away with the killing part and simply imprisoned his brothers for live in nice, gilded prisons.

Speaking of prisons, the Ottoman Empire had one of the largest harems in history where several women from Europe were taken and kept as concubines. Per Islamic tradition, the sultan could own at least 4 official wives alongside “those which your right hand possess” or man malakat aymanukum, an euphemism for sex slave, which one can own in unlimited number and aren’t even considered people. To Mehmed’s credit, it’s said his harem officially only had 9 consorts which was relatively tame compared to Morocco’s Moulay Ismail who had a number of concubines on four digits, or Mehmed’s later successor Suleyman I that had preference for European concubines as consorts while Mehmed and his predecessors were expected to still marry Turkish women or European noblewomen given as part of arranged marriages. But one thing in particular about Mehmed: he had a taste for boys too.

Vlad III had a younger brother called Radu who was sent alongside him as a hostage to the Ottomans to ensure their father’s cooperation. While Vlad loathed his captors, it’s said that Radu became an favorite of the Sultan and stayed with him even after his older brother was released. According to some records, he might have converted to Islam, joined Mehmed’s harem as his catamite and is believed by some to have taken part of the Siege of Constantinople in 1453.

Some historians question the validity of these tales, since many Western scholars might have been biased and wanted to write Mehmed in the most negative light imaginable portraying him as the Anti-Christ, a tyrant and sodomite. This is plausible too, considering that Radu was also married with an Albanian/Serbian princess and he referred to himself as “Christ-loving” in some letters which puts his conversion to Islam questionable. On the other hand, the claim that Radu did indeed participate as a commander in the fall of Constantinople is credible due to the account of Konstantin Mihailović, a former Janissary of Serbian origin who was taken into Ottoman slavery when the Sultan captured his village, separated the men and women, decapitated the men, gave all 700 young women and girls to the Turks while the boys were taken as child soldiers. You know... Kind like what ISIS was doing.

But back to the topic: While Radu’s own homosexuality is questionable, he was certainly not Mehmed’s only lover: Jacob Notaras was the son of a Byzantine nobleman and considered a very beautiful 21 year-old young man that caught the attention of Mehmed. He was sent to his seraglio to serve the Sultan’s pleasure as his catamite as well for seven years until his escape and being reunited with his sisters. This tale is very popular on Tumblr, you can search it if you want to (I’d rather not get into trouble linking the specific blogs or using their art for this blogpost).

Naturally, nationalistic Turks, Islamists in general and Neo-Ottomans in particular don’t like hearing that one of their greatest heroes who provided a great triumph of Islam over Christianity was a “sausage jokey” given the hostile attitude Islamic societies towards homosexuality - even though Turkey is one of the relatively more friendlier countries towards LGBT, it’s still is a taboo subject particularly today. However, some Western liberals when hearing about this, become ecstatic over “gay Muslim great ruler” and happily hoist this as evidence that “Islam is really gay friendly” and to me this is an far more dangerous attitude.

I won’t even tackle the topic of Islam and homosexuality just to not go on off tangent, but let’s focus solely on Mehmed himself: he was a warlord that forced both women and young boys into sexual slavery for his own pleasure, began the centuries long jihad to conquer Europe, declared "At last Europe and Asia are mine! Woe to Christendom! It has lost its sword and its shield!" when his final enemy Skanderbeg perished, implemented a law that authorized fratricide in his family to ensure that only the strong and ruthless would succeed him...  But we are supposed to give a pass to all of that because he was gay? Actual argument I heard: while he was a product of his time and environment, but since he was gay, that alone makes him more “progressive” and “forward-thinking” than the Christian rulers at the time.

This exposes some messed up priorities and hypocrisy from moral relativists to praise a historical figure for having an uncommon trait (i.e. being gay) of his time period from a purely Western perspective and yet accuse those who criticize this same figure for his more controversial aspects (harem-owning, war-mongering fratricidal despot) from also an Western perspective of being “Orientalists”, a meaningless buzzword meant to shut critics up.

But hey, lets see how funny it gets when this biased liberal viewpoint clashes with their more conservative-oriented allies and see what happens.

[bakurapika]

ok, real talk, with the prefacing disclaimer that i love hamilton down to my very soul

when i first listened to it, i came away thinking ‘wow, that was awesome, life changing, etc... too bad about the women’

i was surprised to learn that lin is a feminist and deliberately tried to include women as much as possible, and i think i finally figured out why it rubbed me wrong

debatably......... (mostly determined by how you interpret ‘the schuyler sisters’)....... hamilton fails the bechdel test.

hear me out! a series of essays--

the only songs that a female character sings in a non-supporting role (i’m not counting non-named ensemble women! sorry, they add a lot to the musical but they’re not “characters”) are explicitly about their relation to a man. the only ones i can conceive an argument against are the schuyler sisters and maybe the ending song. let’s go song by song:

alexander hamilton:

female lines are only ‘i loved him’ 

aaron burr sir - my shot - the story of tonight 

no female lines

the schuyler sisters

first of all, let’s start off by saying that story-wise, the song only exists in order to establish hamilton’s future love interests and peggy

first lines are all about daddy schuyler. that part of the convo fails the bechdel test

maybe you could argue that the lines ‘But—look around, look around, the Revolution’s happening in New York’ are character-defining enough to separate from the daddy convo but i think that’s a stretch for a sentence fragment

the chorus about ‘looking for a mind at work’ is prefaced by the men in the ensemble shouting ‘she’s looking for me!’, necessarily creating a sexual/romantic undercurrent to the chorus whether that’s technically what angelica meant or not. the rest of the interactions in the song reinforce this concept

the rest of the song, feminist revolutionary anthem though it may be, is angelica rebuffing burr’s romantic advances (while talking about men, including a man she’d later to have an affair with....................... but that line about getting busy with jefferson in france was deleted from the musical so i suppose for this conversation it’s non-canon)

the only potentially defensible non-man-related lines would be how angelica goes on to sing about manhattan being awesome and revolutionary, but I’d still argue that it’s in the context of her burr conversation and therefore not eligible to make the musical pass the bechdel test.

farmer refuted - you’ll be back - right hand man - a winter’s ball

no female lines

a winter’s ball mentions a woman by name (martha washington) in the context of hamilton’s reputation with the lay-deez

helpless - satisfied

these are romance songs. like that’s not bad but for the purposes of arguing that the women are characters outside of love interests......... nah

though angelica talks to herself enough to almost make it count lmao except it’s still about her male love interest

the story of tonight - wait for it 

no female lines

wait for it mentions a woman by name (theodosia bartow prevost) in the context of being burr’s love interest

stay alive

eliza and angelica get some chorus lines about wanting their love interest to survive

ten duel commandments - meet me inside

no female lines

eliza is mentioned but not by name, just as “wife”

that would be enough

eliza’s “i’m pregnant by hamilton” song. again, not unimportant, but not relevant for the bechdel test and further cementing her role as hamilton’s wife and not much else

guns and ships - history has its eyes on you - yorktown - what comes next - dear theodosia

no female lines

dear theodosia mentions a woman by name (theodosia burr) but she gets no lines. this is probably excusable due to her being a newborn at the time

theodosia bartow prevost isn’t exactly mentioned by name but is mentioned as having died offstage at this point

nonstop

no female lines until significantly through the song

angelica’s lines are about hamilton being her love interest despite her marriage

eliza’s lines are about hamilton and being his wife 

angelica and eliza sing toward the end about hamilton. again not bechdel-defying

though eliza and angelica’s lines often intertwine and chorus together, and though they supposedly have a very close sibling bond, so far we haven’t seen angelica and eliza interact (via letter or in person) since the wedding

what’d i miss - cabinet battle 1 

no female lines

what’d i miss mentions a woman by name (sally hemings) but only in the context of her being a slave

this is more of a wink-nod to jefferson’s hypocrisy which is underscored by other parts of the song (singing about how ‘we are free’ as the stairs he’s on are being carried across the stage by a parade of slaves, for example. if yall don’t know about the historical sally hemings, check her out. 

she was mostly white, for one thing. but historically white americans have viewed blacks in the context of the ‘one-drop’ rule--that is, if any ancestor of yours is black, no matter how far back, you’re black too. absurd from any standpoint except an absurd racial purity one. this wasn’t just a bunch of racists acting racist, btw, it was a legal argument that became law in the south at some points in american history. 

i’m not pointing out her being white as like ‘aw but she was a white, so sad :((((’. it means that her family tree was mostly made up of masters having relations with their slaves that would be, at the very least, an extreme power imbalance and, most probably, rape. 

like i’m sorry to use that word but that’s what it was, pure and simple. 

oh and the white masters would get to keep their own kids as slaves

this was pretty frowned upon in polite society from my understanding, but it still happened all the time, and jefferson was one of the guys who did it

she was sent to france to take care of jefferson’s daughter during a (years-long) visit. sally was 14, jefferson was 44. she became pregnant on that visit at age 16.

technically she was considered free while in france, but she followed jefferson back to america. he promised he’d let their kids go free at age 21. (he almost definitely wound up fathering 6 of her children.) jefferson did free her male kids... in his will. and he freed two of sally’s male relatives after they bought their freedom. whadda guy

sally herself was finally “informally” freed by jefferson’s daughter

sadly sally was potentially illiterate and didn’t leave us anything in her own words

ok i’m sorry that was a tangent but i think it’s an important one so i’m not deleting it. i’m not an expert, that was a wiki summary, so please correct me if anything’s misinformation (tho i know i glossed over some details.) anyway back to hamilton

take a break

hoo boy. ok. so the female lines in this song can be basically classified this way:

i’m mommy to hamilton’s son (and i can beatbox about it like a mofo)

i’m in love with hamilton

i want to spend time with hamilton and my father

we do finally get angelica and eliza interacting with each other again! they say each other’s names. then we’re back to talking about hamilton

again, not a bad song! but disappointing from the standpoint of waiting for female characters to interact without it being about hamilton

to be fair! this entire musical is a love song to hamilton. i think i could find a few male-male conversations that aren’t about my dearest alexander. but not many. everyone wants a piece of alexander

probably most of the non-alex-worshiping lines would be king george

say no to this

a new female gets lines! she talks about her husband and then seduces alexander. that’s it tho

the room where it happens

no female lines

schuyler defeated

eliza gets a few lines! it’s all about her father and husband to her son

to be fair, eliza seems really bored with all this. philip’s the one who’s bringing all the men up.

still, her only role in this scene is to give context for a burr-hamilton confrontation, and she does it by talking about a bunch of men. no bechdel-passing here.

cabinet battle 2 - washington on your side - i know him - the adams administration - we know - hurricane

no female lines

“cabinet battle 2″ at one point contained a reference to jefferson and angelica’s affair, but this was cut to “tee up the next song”

again, angelica being mentioned solely as a love interest. still such good lines argh

“we know” mentions maria, but not by name, just as “wife”

and weirdly, she’s barely mentioned at all! the focus of the song is more on her husband james reynolds and his extortion

“hurricane” mentions eliza as well as hamilton’s mother, briefly

the reynolds pamphlet

angelica gets some bamf lines! and the idea of picking her love for her sister over her love for hamilton is more of the feminist anthem we like to hear. 

but in terms of her role in the song, she’s there to romantically reject hamilton

she doesn’t talk with eliza directly, so still not enough to pass the bechdel test

eliza is mentioned as “mrs. hamilton” but has no lines

burn

another song that seems to be written from a feminist perspective! a woman reclaiming her voice in the annals of history

buuuuut............... it’s also primarily a song about eliza’s relationship with hamilton

we do finally get to hear more eliza/angelica direct correspondence! “Be careful with that one, love, he will do what it takes to survive” and “You have married an Icarus, he has flown too close to the sun.” beautiful lines, and pretty historically accurate too! but not enough to pass the bechdel test, since they’re about hamilton

blow us all away

a few new women gets lines! it’s about how wet their panties are for philip

the women have names btw, which you wouldn’t know just by listening to the soundtrack: martha and dolly, in reference to thomas jefferson and james madison’s respective wives. insert cuck jokes here

stay alive reprise

i don’t even wanna dissect this, it’s too heartwrenching. but all of eliza’s lines are with and about other men, including her son. her part in this song’s mostly about her role as the mother of hamilton’s child, not about her, specifically

it’s quiet uptown

surprisingly, angelica gets some lines at the beginning that aren’t specifically about a man! she’s referencing hamilton’s grief over his son, but also eliza’s grief. she doesn’t specify at any point that she’s focusing on alexander, and she goes for relatable generalizations instead. (until she becomes part of the chorus commenting on alex’s grieving process)

since angelica’s not talking with another woman, this still isn’t enough to pass the bechdel test. but it’s a start!

eliza gets very few lines here. i’m not necessarily saying that to be critical, though. i think her understatement is almost more powerful than hamilton’s tearful singing, and i think that’s what lin was trying to do with her character.

that said, again, her role in the song is hamilton-centered. no matter how many or how few lines she’s singing, they’d be about her husband and son

the election of 1800

no female character lines

we do get a few unnamed female lines, about a man yeah, but surprisingly as “voters” despite suffrage not yet happening! 

this might be a case of historically inaccurate actor casting the same way that white guys aren’t playing all the pasty presidents

or, it could be a nod to women’s active role in historical elections! also acknowledged in the line “ladies, tell your husbands, vote for burr”

either way, not enough to pass the bechdel test, but still a nice touch that lin went out of his way for

your obedient servant

no female lines

best of wives and best of women

eliza’s so sleep-deprived here i s2g. there’s not much to analyze in lines that are basically ‘alex oh my god it’s four am, please just come back to bed for three goddamn hours, why are you like this, i’m going to sleep”

again tho, it’s eliza-hamilton interaction, no other women, so no bechdel passing

the world was wide enough

technically angelica sings three words in the chorus here (“angelica and eliza”) so i can’t say no female lines. but it’s close

women are mentioned but only in terms of their relationship to hamilton (his mom, angelica, eliza)

who lives who dies who tells your story

of course, eliza’s lines are mostly about hamilton again.... be weird if they weren’t at this point. she talks about her life but always brings it back to the context of hamilton and his passing

eliza and angelica sing a couple lines about hamilton together, but angelica dies offstage during the song

so............ last song and we still haven’t passed the test

i’m not writing this huge tirade for any, uh, real reason. i don’t want anyone to boycott the musical or even go so far as to call it anti- or un-feminist. but ✊😭 if there’s one thing alexander hamilton’s taught me, it’s “write thousands of inflammatory and highly politicized words for no reason, every day, just because you feel like it, even if it demonizes your allies, and if no one reads it, yell a lot and write some more”

i’m honoring your legacy, alex

(and bc i really do think it’s important to critically examine the things you love from time to time, and that doesn’t mean you love them any less)