In the Ottoman palace a sultan's brothers were a threat, so they were killed or locked away. One prince spent seventeen years shut in the harem's princes' rooms while his brothers died one by one. When they finally came to tell him he was sultan, he barricaded the door.

You're him. Born in 1615, son of Sultan Ahmed and his favourite, Kösem, you watch an uncle, a half-brother and a brother take the throne in turn, and almost every one of your brothers dies on their orders. This is your life from the day you're born in the harem to the day the family's oldest law comes for you.

Told in second person and based on the sources. The deaths of your brothers, the barricaded door in 1640, your mother's search for women to give you an heir, the sable furs, the deposition of 1648 and the ruling that ended your life are in the chronicles. Many stories about you were written by the men who removed you, so where the record is doubtful (the 280 drowned concubines, the fattest-woman search, the name "the Cage" itself) we say so.

Based on the life of Sultan Ibrahim (1615-1648) of the Ottoman Empire.

SOURCES

- Mustafa Naima, Tarih-i Naima (early 18th century)

- Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 1993)

- Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 (John Murray, 2005)

- Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

- Birol Gundogdu, "Delegitimizing Sultan Ibrahim", Mukaddime 17/1 (2026)

- Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Ottoman Women Builders (2006)

- Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire (1995)

- Agoston and Masters, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (2009)

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