Can you rank SOW mothers in both shows from best to worst? (Include Mahidevran and Sah too)
If you don't mind, I'll skip the question a bit. I don't think it's entirely fair to rank them as such. They were all different women contending with different pressures, situations and (of course) children. So if it's OK, I'll assess them each in alphabetical order and analyse them that way.
Valide Ayşe Hafsa Sultan is pretty much your standard aristocratic mother. She both cares about her children but also strongly believes in and upholds traditions. She cares about Hatice, but her grand failure is her attempt to shield and coddle her. To the point that she lays the groundwork for Hatice's inability to face realities that she doesn't like. She also makes no attempt to understand or get her daughters to understand their privilege. That said, the very worst thing she does is put her daughters in arranged marriages. I mean as awful as it was that Hürrem married off Mihrimah to Rüstem, she's not unique in doing this to her daughter. Valide did the exact same thing twice when she arranged Şah's marriage to Lütfi Paşa and Fatma's marriage to Mustafa Paşa.
Mahidevran was one the better mothers on the show. She was consistently motivated by her instinct to protect Mustafa at all costs and she gave him genuinely good advice. It wasn't her fault he chose to ignore her half the time. I'm docking points though for the times she lied to him though to make herself look better in her conflict against Hürrem.
Şah clearly cared deeply about Esmahan. For example how worried she was when she was injured by Mihrimah. That said, she was still essentially your standard aristocratic mother.
Hürrem could be caring, warm, protective and toxic as a parent. The thing to understand about Hürrem's attitude to her children is the fact that her protectiveness came from having lost her original family and wanting to do anything she could to stop having to live through that ever again. She did horrible things like arrange the marriage between Mihrimah and Rüstem and her actions led indirectly to Cihangir's death. That said, she was one of the warmest Sultanas towards her children and she clearly did her best to make them feel loved and accepted by her. And she has to win points for outright refusing to choose between Selim and Bayezid in season 4. And as much as you could argue that her choices exacerbated the conflict between Selim and Bayezid, she honestly did everything she could reasonably be expected to do in order to stop the fighting. And she protected the both of them both from Süleyman and from each other. Her death was the turning point that doomed Bayezid. Also, the show is kind of harsh on her parenting. Since we do see her get blamed for Mehmet and Bayezid's deaths. Which I don't think is fair.
Nurbanu made some mistakes but was clearly a caring and protective mother towards Murad. Their relationship had very little development though. Some toxicity is implied through the clearly arranged marriages of her daughters. But her qualities as a mother aren't one of the aspects of Nurbanu that really gets a lot of exploration.
Safiye as a mother really comes down to her actions before the show as much as during. I feel like she could be a bit toxic and controlling. Particularly towards Fahriye. And even Hümaşah's initial prickliness can be seen in thls light. That said she was protective and clearly cared deeply for her children. As much as she did try to use Iskender for power. I don't think her saving him from the fratricide law simply comes down to that. She genuinely wanted to save at least one of her other sons at a time where she was mourning. And it's clear that the mass fratricide that season 1 opens with traumatised and affected her deeply. I feel like it was one of the events in her life that changed her as a person and contributed to the ruthless person we see. That said I have minimal evidence for this since we don't see her before that aside from when she was very young.
Handan she was protective towards Ahmet. That said, she's harder to judge since her involvement didn't tend to go as far as other mothers' did. That said she did clearly care about him and was far from the most harmful person on this list.
Halime was clearly deeply protective of Mustafa. So she gains points for that. Although she loses points for selling Dilruba up the river. I will defend her by saying that although she made mistakes, she made them from desperation. Which makes a lot of sense since she had already lost her oldest son Mahmut to execution.
Kösem She tried. She made her mistakes but she cared and at least she tried. She clearly tried to build herself a safe and secure family. And she gets credit for that though. She did what she could when it came to the dispute between Osman and Mehmet. That said, I did find it weird that she preferred Osman over her own son and that she was so quick to forgive him after Mehmet died. And how she dealt with the riot against Osman was clearly a mistake on her part. That said, it wasn't her fault that Murad was such a terrible person. She tried to comfort Gevherhan and support her as best she could. And I don´t think she is to blame for Bayezid's death. Meanwhile as much as she misstepped in the lead up to Kasim's death, that was Murad's decision and so is on him far more than it is on her. And as for Ibrahim's death, Turhan forced her to agree to it. So it's unfair to blame Kösem for that in my opinion.
Gülbahar she tried to protect Bayezid. And she was right to point out that as bad a fate as death was, the kafes wasn't really all that much better. Is it fair to blame her for Bayezid's death? Kind of. But I'm rewatching season 2 at the moment and so I'll see how I feel after their deaths.
Ayşe she clearly cared about her kids. That said it is very complicated to place her. On the one hand, she is in the unique position on this list of having deliberately killed her children. That said, she probably did it in order to protect them from Murad's wrath. And honestly I don´t really blame her for that. The man was bloodthirsty.
Turhan she didn't get much development. But I agree with what you said in your most recent post. She only seemed to care about Mehmet for the purpose of power.
