Cat's Historical Doodles

Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja Leszczyńska was born on 23 June 1703, in Trzebnica; she was the second daughter of Stanislaw I Leszczy ń ski and his wife, Catherine Opali ń ska. She had an older sister, Anna, who died in 1717. She was born the year before her father was made King of Poland by Charles XII of Sweden, who had invaded the country in 1704. In 1709, her father was deposed, and the family was granted refuge by the King of Sweden in the city of Kristianstad. In Sweden, they were welcomed by the dowager queen Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, and became popular members of society life. During this period of her life, Maria began speaking Swedish and later, as Queen of France, she was known to welcome Swedish ambassadors with the phrase Welcome, dearest heart! in Swedish. In 1714, the King of Sweden gave them permission to live in his fiefdom of Zweibrücken, where they were supported by the income of the fiefdom. They lived there until Charles XII died in 1718 and Z...

Hürrem Sultan's birth name is unknown. It is said that it may have been Anastasia or Aleksandra Lisowska. Sources indicate that she was from Ruthenia, which was part of the Polish Kingdom. She was born circa 1502/4, in the town of Rohatyn, a major city of the Ruthenian Voivodeship. In the 1520s, Crimean Tatars captured her during one of their frequent raids into Ruthenia. Hürrem was first taken to the Crimean city of Kaffa, a major centre of slave trade, before she was taken to Istanbul. There, the Valide Sultan (the mother of the Sultan) Hafsa Sultan chose Hürrem as a gift for her son, Sultan Süleyman . Hürrem probably entered the harem at the age of 15. The precise year is unknown, but scholars believe that she became Süleyman's concubine around the time he became sultan, in 1520. Hürrem's unprecedented rise from harem slave to Süleyman's legal wife and Queen of the Ottoman Empire attracted jealousy and disfavour, not only from her rivals in the harem, but a...