#mc meta

Hatice’s past

I wanted to do this kind of in order so the first thing I wanted to talk about it’s about Hatice’s past. Her life before the show. Now, we don’t get much of the characters from before the start of the show, but we do get some moments when Hatice and others talk about the past.

At the start of the show, right when Suleyman receives the news that his father died and he is going to be the next Sultan of the Ottoman Empire we know he was in Manisa and that he rushes to the capital. And Mahidevran and Mustafa follow him some time later, but if I remember correctly we get to see Hatice and Hafsa (along with Gulfem) already in the capital when Suleyman is crowned and goes to Hafsa to get her blessings.

That is our first time viewing of Hatice Sultan. She is looking at her beloved brother with so much love that we know from the get go that this is a close and loving relationship. She is dressed in black, in mourning for her father, but she still shines with happiness seeing her brother safe. She is feeling at peace here, and still if looking carefully one can still then see glimpses of a somewhat melancholy in her eyes. Maybe grief for her father? Maybe grief that her life is not how she dreamed it could be as a girl? Grief that her destiny, even at such young age, is already laced with the tragic death of not one, but two husbands? (At least that’s what I remember her telling Hürrem, that she had two husbands previously) And husbands she had no say in marrying, that where chosen by her father and mother. I think, at heart, Hatice was never a character made for happiness and that just about breaks my heart.

But I’m really thinking about her past here. We already know she had a crush on Ibrahim since she was a girl visiting Suleyman in his provincial post in Manisa from the flashback of the poisoned kaftan, if I’m not mistaken - It’s really has been some time since I last rewatched the show so my memory is a little fuzzy in some details - and we can trace her feelings from even her girlhood, much like Mihrimah’s crush on Bali Bey.

I think @mc-critical was dead on right when she says that Hatice likes to fantasize things and wish, almost desperately, for her wanted outcomes. So when she got stuck marrying older men that she most definitely didn’t love or even had time to try and develop feelings for her only escape was clinging to the memory of Ibrahim. Someone younger, that she thought was handsome, someone that was her favourite sibling best friend, who could play beautifully in his violin, no wonder she kept this love close and nurtured it. But, I’m not really talking about that here yet.

In the show Hafsa talks about how Selim made her suffer and from that we get that she had some competition in his affections and that she must have went through a little of what Mahidevran, Gulfem, Hürrem and so many others go through in the harrem.

In the show mothers are shown to rely heavily on their daughters while shielding their sons. The one exception I can think of this is Sah Sultan with her daughter, Esmahan, since we never really see her confiding in her the way Hürrem does to Mihrimah or including Esmahan in her schemes like, again, Hürrem does with Mihrimah and later Fatma does with Huricihan. Even Hafsa herself relies heavily in her daughter(s) to get what she wants, she confides in them, rants to them and is very involved and very proud of her girls. What I mean to say with all of this is that since this is the pattern showed in this universe so it kind of leaves things implied that Hafsa relied on her daughters when her husband was alive, especially in the later years when she needed to keep Suleyman alive at all costs.

That is what I say about Hatice’s naivety and innocence seeming out of place. Because she was already being exposed to that, she was already part of such a dangerous and loaded environment that it really seems to me bad writing when they show Hatice not understading some of the core laws of the harem.

But I actually can think of a kind of explanation to this. Hafsa is very protective of Hatice and everyone is well aware that Hatice’s mental health is really quite fragile. So it could be understandable that Hafsa would shield her as much as she could. That would also be something that could tie Sah’s resentment of Hatice: she gets a dream life with the man she loves, she is close to the capital, her husband is very influent and, in the past, Hafsa protected her the most of her daughters while Sah herself was stuck with a man she pretty much loathed and I’m pretty sure was made to help her mother and her family in general with the tense situation of the time.

So yeah, those are my thoughts about Hatice’s past. I can understand how they kind of build the foundation of some of her future problems because being denied what she wanted and then resigning herself to not having it - when she marries her parents chosen - to later actually getting a chance at her dream life? Yep, I can understand her holding on to that very fiercely.

Hatice and her relationship with her siblings and her mother

Now I talked a little about Hatice relationship with her siblings and her mother when talking about her past, but I wanted to look into it a little more closely.

Hatice is the Sultana we get to see the most out of the Imperial Family. She is there from the get go and we see how much she is loved by her brother and her mother. She is clearly their favourite and she feels safe and very much loved by them. In turn Suleyman is Hatice’s favourite person of her family, she says as much to him - I think after Ibrahim’s death? - she is the one she loved the most.

Hafsa Sultan was mother to all the Sultanas we get to see on the show: Beyhan, Sah, Fatma and Hatice (and that’s the order of birth in my opinion).

Beyhan and Hatice have a very loving relantionship and to me Beyhan acts almost motherly to Hatice? Indicating their age difference and how she sees her, she is her baby sister, the youngest of their family and therefore she must be protected and cared for. Beyhan is quiet and other than her lashing out - rightfully - when her husband is killed she is shown to be very mild and very controlled in her feelings. Honestly the show doesn’t do much with her and Beyhan ends up mostly being a background character that only shows up to support Hatice and be loving and caring to her.

We never get to see Fatma with Hatice as she only shows up after Hatice already died, but we do see glimpses of her anger at her sister death, her grief. And even as much as I dislike the way Fatma pretty much uses Huricihan to weaken Bayezid position in Suleyman’s eyes I have to believe she cares for her niece and nephew and that she wants to protect this little piece of her sister.

Now the most tense and most interesting relationship with her sisters is, for sure, Hatice’s relationship with Sah. There’s a lot unsaid between them, a lot of resentment and a lot of love too. Sah is just as protective of Hatice as she is of her own daughter. She literally had Hatice’s horse killed for hurting her baby sister.

But Sah also hatesweakness. She really does. I think that is because she was always very careful in not show her own fears and doubts, her own weak points, so she doesn’t want her sister to do it either, because that is an opening for their enemies, for those who wish to harm them. Sah, most of all, wants Hatice to think more before she reacts, to actually be more calculating in how her actions will generate consequences. Something that is very much unlike Hatice, because she is one to react first and think later. That in itself would be a great causa of tension between the sisters.

And like I said before, the fact that Hatice is clearly favoured by their mother and by Suleyman can definitely be something that makes Sah feel jealous, feel left out even. She was never asked who she wanted to marry, who she loved, she was never given the choice to get a life she dreamed of. And to see Hatice getting that and to rub salt on the wound, to see Hatice get that with the man she loved first? Yeah, it’s completely understandable that there’s resentment and tension there. How couldn’t it?

But still Sah rises above that and does her best to protect Hatice and give her what she wants: revenge. At least to the point that it doesn’t harm their blood, the dynasty. She would never support Hatice going against Suleyman himself and she is very firm in saying that they need to be more united.

I think of all her siblings Hatice hates the patronizing feeling she gets of her interactions with Sah the most. She doesn’t like that her sister sees her as weak, as less than herself, and she lashes out… Proving exactly what Sah was talking about. They are very opposite of one another and yet there are some big similarities between them that keep the tension alive.

As I said before, Hatice is very possessive of Ibrahim and his love so even the hint that her sister shared a past with Ibrahim is enough to rankle her and to make her distrust Sah and her intentions. It’s no wonder that later on Hatice starts to hide things from Sah and tries to act alone, only to be caught and prove her sister somewhat right once again. I honestly don’t think their relationship could truly resolve itself because there’s too much baggage there, too much pain and suspicion, too much resentment for what the other had.

And still they love each other. It’s really very interesting to watch all that contrast between Hatice and Sah and how well they play each other on scenes.

Now Suleyman and Hatice… I mean those two probably deserve a whole meta just for them if I’m being honest and I don’t think I’m the right person to do this because I never actually analysed Suleyman properly. I kind of want to keep liking him and if I really stop and go beyong his beautiful voice reading love poems I’m pretty sure I’ll hate his guts like he deserves. But speaking very shallowy about this relationship: we can see it’s beginning and we can see the end. Hatice was the sister that Suleyman loved best and was the sister he ended up hating. She was the sister he couldn’t face, that never let him forget his guilt and his part in the death of her dreams. He literally gave her all that she could want to create her dream life and then took it all away and even went as far as forbid her to actually properly grieve her loss. All I can say is that if you like Hatice you can’t really like Suleyman too.

Now, the last relationship of this “Imperial Family” side of things is, of course, Hatice’s relationship with her mother, Ayse Hafsa Sultan.

Just a little something that I always thought about this relationship: I feel like the show took the meaning of Hatice “early born baby girl” as something literal. Now, I may be totally wrong here, but I always felt like Hatice was Hafsa last baby and that maybe it was a difficult pregnancy and that Hatice was born prematurely and maybe she was a weak baby? That her mother feared she would lose?

That would explain the protective streak that Hafsa feels so strongly for Hatice. One might say that she is protective of all her children, but honestly you can see quite clearly that Suleyman and Hatice are the favourites and that’s only emphasized by the writing. Hafsa is very caring, very warm and very physically affectionate with Hatice. She is also a little more willing to bend the rules for her.

She always tries to hide the ugly truths she finds out from her daughter while at the same time needing Hatice by her side as an ally. She shares her burdens with Hatice, but very skillfully tries to hide the cracks in Hatice’s perfect dream life so that her daughter can remain happy and not try anything harmful to herself.

Hafsa is very conscious of duty and of the laws and customs of the Ottoman Empire. She is very strict and she demands that of people around her, that’s one of her things. The only times she goes against the customs is when she is protecting her children. When she asks Suleyman to give Beyhan’s husband a second chance and all the times she interferes in Hatice’s favour asking Suleyman to make concessions that could impact negatively the State in favour of making her daughter happy.

Hafsa love for Hatice is completely undeniable and she even has a stroke after she finds out what Ibrahim is doing with Nigar and that Nigar is pregnant and she simply knows how much this will destroy her daughter. One of my favourite scenes between Hafsa and Hatice is when Hatice is talking to her mother and saying that she knows her children are unlucky because she can’t be as good a mother as Hafsa was to her and that she needs her mother and that is the push that makes Hafsa start recovering.

Overall I feel sad for Hatice most of all when Hafsa dies because that’s when she loses her shield and now there’s no one to really protect her from the harsh truths of her life or whom she can run to, to make things better. The cracks in Hatice’s life and heart only grow bigger after losing Hafsa and it’s quite heartbreaking when you think about it.

Hatice’s innocence and Hatice’s mental health

I want to preface this by saying that I do know and acknowledge Hatice’s many qualities: she is a loving daughter, sister and aunt. She really gives her all to those she loves, she is quite sincere, she – at least at first – doesn’t really get involved in the harem intrigues, she tries to do her duty, she believes in something better, she wants to be happy and want others to be happy. She is, at her core, a good person.

But she is – and that’s my opinion of it – also a person not suited for her environment. She ends up looking weak and too fragile to live in the times she does. She is not good at adapting to her circumstances and she has a penchant to try and kill herself that I find both overused by the writers and kind of a sign of a weakness in her character. I can’t say I find her particularly bright either, to be honest. At least not when we have so many characters that seem to shine by their intellects.

After reading @mc-critical assessment that Hatice uses her “innocence” and naivety to hide from truths she finds too harsh to deal with, that this is kind of her coping mechanism I came to find that I agree with this completely. Maybe that’s another reason why Hatice sometimes rubs me the wrong way and I could never quite articulate it. We can see her doing it at multiple times in her life: she pretends as if her life depends on it, because, well, it does. Whenever Hatice has a big emotional moment that breaks this wall that she puts up her immediate solution is to try and kill herself.

That is, of course, partly the writers, but after a time it’s really something that’s completely up to par with Hatice’s own character. She is always ready to end her life when things don’t seem to go her way and when she can’t really change the circumstances around her. As many things with Hatice (something I discovered by writing this whole thing) this kind of reminds me of some things in my personal life and it ends up with me being less comprehensive of Hatice’s actions than I should, as my own experiences make me somewhat unable to feel much understanding for an action that I find really quite selfish. By the way I do hate that I feel like that and I do understand that Hatice has mental health problems and they are not properly treated or really dealt with in the whole show.

Alright, but let’s go back to the beginning and circle back to Hatice’s innocence. At the beginning of the show Hatice is, at her core, her most innocent. She personally has not had to deal with much of the intrigues of the harem, or at least that’s the impression the show ends up giving us. She is also, in my opinion, in her most realistic. While she is in love with Ibrahim and wishes she could be with him, she also knows that there’s too many obstacles in their way and that it’s most likely that her and his wishes are nothing more than pipe dreams.

Therefore she tries to find contentment and live as happy as she can: she is a devoted and loving aunt to Mustafa, she is as much of a friend to Gulfem as she can be. Her only wish is to see Ibrahim happy, healthy and safe. She wants peace and if she can’t be with him, she wants him to be as happy as he can. Of course her happy quiet life comes crashing down when she overhears her mother talking with Suleyman about arranging a marriage to her, as Hafsa doesn’t want her daughter to wilt behind the harem’s walls.

That’s a moment when I feel like Hatice could have talked to her mother, maybe not told her about Ibrahim as we can see later on how Hafsa responds to that piece of news, but she could have tried to have a voice. Hafsa and Suleyman always seemed ready to accommodate her wishes, it felt unnecessarily dramatic of her not to say anything to them. But, even when I say that I do know that’s hard to break patterns and up to this point Hatice hasn’t really much of a choice in who she is to marry and how she is to live her life, so it’s also understandable that she doesn’t process this change and doesn’t think to talk to her mother about her feelings.

So she accepts the marriage, in part because she doesn’t feel like she can’t and in part because deny it would raise questions and it could put Ibrahim’s life in danger. Which is something Hatice will neverdo. That’s one of the many cracks in whatever Hatice wishes for herself and she deals with it in the best way she knows how: by trying to kill herself.

After that she cries that she wished Gulfem hadn’t saved her, but she does try to accept her circumstances and follow through with the marriage. Of course that doesn’t actually happen and eventually she does get her wish and marries Ibrahim.

That’s when Hatice creates her new dreams and clings to her naivety and innocence once again: she starts believing that they will simply and purely be happy and that nothing will ever spoil that. She wants to marry Ibrahim and have children with him, she wants to build a family with the man she loves. In itself is a sweet and kind desire to aspire to. Technically quite easy to achieve too once the “getting married” part was sorted. But in her dreams Hatice never takes into account that outside (and even inside) forces can maybe interfere with her wishes.

She never stops to think about how Ibrahim’s own ambition can be worrisome and how he can amass enemies left and right that could do damage to them – as it actually happens. She doesn’t think that politics will interfere in her marriage, because really, why should she? She is in a bubble right now and quite happy to remain there. To her Ibrahim is completely perfect and she won’t acknowledge the parts of him that may cause some troubles for their future.

She also hopes, against all logic, especially given the signs so far, that Hürrem and Mahidevran will be able to live peacefully in the harem. Yes, it is understandable why she would think that, but to act as if it’s a given and to mostly ignore the big elephant in the room? That’s another part of Hatice closing her eyes to realities she doesn’t want to deal with. Especially when we have Hafsa Sultan there to rein things in when Hürrem and Mahidevran get too much out of hand so, this way, really, Hatice has no reasons to worry as she knows her mother will deal with things in the best way.

The constant breaks in her reality where something she doesn’t deal it well. Hatice is one of those people that acts before she thinks properly on things and that’s why she sometimes says things she doesn’t truly mean (like when she and Ibrahim have their first big argument and she reminds him of her position and how she could potentially take all he worked for from him in a snap of her wrists. She truly doesn’t mean that, as we know of the Imperial Family there’s a big argument that Hatice is the least classist – at least I think so despite her more arrogant moments.) and that sometimes has a negative impact that she doesn’t always account for.

She, after her outburst with Ibrahim, expects him to live happily with her again. After her first fights with Hürrem and, even with Mahidevran, she just expects them to forget everything and just get along with her. That may be because since she is an Imperial Princess people naturally defer to her and don’t have the luxury of holding grudges, but it’s more that Hatice herself at this point is not keeping scores.

Her happiness seems fated to not last as soon after her marriage she and Ibrahim must endure their first separation and she deals with that rather badly. She wilfully forgets hers and Ibrahim’s positions and questions Suleyman’s decision – something that could have very drastic results in any other time than this early period of his reign. She then finds a glimpse of happiness in her first pregnancy, but, again, ignores the rumbles and the possible dangers that Ibrahim is already amassing with his growing positions and with his growing power and prestige.

When she loses her baby, she obviously breaks down and is heartbroken. It’s another moment of happiness stolen from her and something that fragilizes Hatice even more. I think it’s the first seed of her paranoia later on that nothing will ever go right in her life – sadly something that ends up being true.

Her losses and her broken moments of happiness make her, in my opinion, slowly grow in her need for control. Of her surroundings and of her relationship with Ibrahim. She also grows to be very superstitious of the statues deciding they were the guilty ones for much of her bad luck without actually thinking that it was the fact that Ibrahim, knowing full well what the reaction to them would be, was the main guilty one for having such incendiary items in their home.

Her hope against hope is sometimes difficult to watch because we, as the audience, can see the cracks that she pretends are not there. She feels Ibrahim’s distance after their argument, but she doesn’t really press him and he doesn’t really talk to her. This is where once again I’ll fully agree with @mc-critical: the biggest flaw of their relationship is lack of communication. But I plan to delve deeper into their relationship a little later on. Anyway, as the danger grows she continually refuses to see things around her: she doesn’t notice that Ibrahim and Hürrem really don’t get along, that Ibrahim is growing more and more ambitious and that her brother is someone that doesn’t deal well with threats to himself and his reign.

She doesn’t see, or don’t want to see, the warning signs and then lashes out when they obviously amount to something, blaming other people for actions that were building up right before her eyes all the time.

After her twins are born it seems that she will get everything she could possibly want: her marriage with a man she loves and children that can make them form a family. Except Ibrahim is cheating on her with Nigar - and after being suspicious for a time, she decides not to do anything and pretend, for years, that her family is well and whole and that everything is alright.

Even later on, after the whole mess with the affair is found out and later on in the campaign when Ibrahim names himself “Sultan Ibrahim” she doesn’t seem to see the huge, glaring sign of trouble. She only thinks Hürrem is causing trouble without really allowing herself to ackwoledge that not everything is Hürrem’s own doing – sure, Hürrem does take advantage of many things, but Ibrahim is in no way innocent. And she prefers to pretend that nothing is wrong, that everything can still be like it was in their beginning when everyone was innocent and happy, that we never see her warn Ibrahim during this time (she does it in the past I think) to be more careful.

Until he dies and all her hopes and dreams come crashing down and she is stuck with a harsh reality that doesn’t give her anything and doesn’t leave her with nothing but a desperate need for revenge, something that will make her pain be a little less, something that will avenge for the life she convinced herself she had – or could have if not for Hürrem – and now forever lost.

I see all that and I hurt for her. But I really can’t help but think that if she had maintained her more realistic side from before her relationship with Ibrahim she maybe could have saved herself, at least, a little bit of heartache.