Curious, how does that manga Drops of Dreams portray Hurrem in comparison to MC? Would you say it’s more or less accurate in terms of the historical figure and in terms of the historical relationship with Suleiman?
oh interesting question anon! regarding general differences with mc hurrem, i think the biggest contrast by far is in their personalities. dod hurrem does act quite emotionally and impulsively at first, but she’s altogether a lot less fiery than mc hurrem and she also becomes pretty calculating and coolheaded as the story progresses (though not at all in a villainous way, she remains the indubitable protagonist and hero of the story). i would also say dod hurrem is significantly more… idealized, in a way? she adjusts imo much too quickly with her situation of being ripped away from family and home and being sold into slavery, and it isn’t framed at the time or in future chapters as a maladaptive coping mechanism or a conscious repression of her trauma. she quite honestly seems… fine, all in all, with it, which is obviously very unrealistic. (which i think is unfortunate bc i do believe that dod mahidevran’s reflection of her own position, as brief as it is, is quite incisive and believably carries the residue of unhealed and no doubt crippling trauma that both women historically must have experienced.) granted, mc isn’t super great about this either, but i think it does a better job with it between the two by far at least when it comes to hurrem herself. while i will always side-eye the show’s exhausting trend of making slaves fall head over heels in love with their owners, mc hurrem frequently acts like a girl and later woman who was ripped away from her home and life and had her entire family killed in front of her, which is more than i can say for dod hurrem. overall i think mc hurrem is definitely a richer, fuller character whose trauma is explored in depth, though i very much love dod hurrem too! i’m of the opinion that mc has a fairly bad, fairly poorly written plot, and i do think mc hurrem’s character also suffers as a result of that, while dod is a lot tighter and more streamlined and the writing isn’t nearly as messy. but even with all that in mind, the more fleshed out character has to be mc hurrem.
i really can’t say one is definitively more accurate than the other bc both of them are pretty wildly creative with that artistic license. i mean dod hurrem was for a while in love with ibrahim which culminated in a short affair with him that throws perpetual doubt over mehmed’s paternity. she’s also captured from her village at close to the same age she is when she enters the harem (so 16-17), which is in line with mc’s portrayal and more than likely not the case with the real hurrem. but dod hurrem does retain the historical hurrem’s penchant for poetry, and accurately bonds with suleiman over their shared appreciation for it, while mc makes the odd choice to give that to firuze; mc suleiman does recite poems to hurrem but as far as i can remember she barely, if ever, recites any to him. meanwhile in dod, suleiman very much enjoys listening to hurrem recite poems and she’s extremely good at it. moreover dod hurrem and suleiman consistently send letters to each other when suleiman is away on campaign and hurrem almost always prefaces her letters with a poem. suleiman at one point even states point-blank to ibrahim that hurrem is “much better at [writing poems]” than he is, which is high praise particularly given that dod suleiman is much more emotionally detached (i’d almost call him unsentimental) than mc suleiman. dod hurrem also has more influence in state affairs bc suleiman gives her his ear in those things -- in contrast to mc hurrem who is sadly, by a wide margin, directly involved in mostly harem or succession-related plots -- so the manga is more historically accurate on that front. neither mc nor dod get the point for stressing that the haseki sultan was an unprecedented title that was made specifically for hurrem by suleiman, and neither of them get the point for the one-mother-one-son rule. mc gets the point for making hurrem red-haired, because the manga for some reason predominantly portrays her as blonde. and ykw not only hurrem, mc overwhelmingly gets the point for accuracy of physical appearance. as nice to look at as suleiman and ibrahim are as pretty boys (particularly suleiman as a bishounen with flowing golden hair, lol), i don’t need to say much about how hilariously inaccurate it is.
all in all, it’s a you win some you lose some situation. if i had to choose i’d probably go with dod hurrem as the more historically accurate one bc mc is like the soap opera of soap operas and much of the time the plot matches that, which by and large means the characters are also swept along in the very historically inaccurate drama. dod is obviously a far cry from an accurate representation of history, ofc -- like if i were a historian it would have had me crashing out -- but it does things much less for the “well, it makes absolutely no sense in the context of this setting but it’ll make the audience gasp” punch than mc does.
as for hurrem and suleiman… again, it’s dicey. i’d say that on one front mc is closer to historically accurate in terms of the impression i get from historical records of suleiman and hurrem, since dod portrays them less as a romance and more as something of a… transactional partnership with benefits, is the way i’d put it i guess. they’re attracted to each other and suleiman finds novelty in and eventually comes to trust hurrem’s intelligence to the point of taking her advice on many state matters and generally leaving her to her own accord to get involved in politics behind the scenes if she wants. hurrem respects suleiman’s vision and ambition and seems to have developed some measure of feelings for him (she feels unexpectedly jealous when he comments on the beauty of a harem newcomer, and is then unexpectedly relieved that suleiman still chooses her to attend him for the night over said newcomer), but she also explicitly reflects that she doesn’t love him and overall, she’s much more interested in how keeping his ear can serve her interests and keep her children safe and her position secure. (and neither version touches in much depth on the fact that hurrem is his slave for a significant portion of their relationship, so. there’s that.) it’s a kind of dynamic i can see from historical hurrem’s side -- being attached but simultaneously detached, in the relationship as much as if not more for the security and status it provides her and her children -- but historical suleiman does strike me as very much genuinely enamored with hurrem, while dod suleiman is. well. very far from being called “enamored” with anyone. on the other hand though, dod suleiman is more like the historical suleiman in that he’s almost 100% faithful to hurrem -- relatively soon following his first night with her there’s one scene of him sleeping with mahidevran, but after that his appreciation for hurrem’s intelligence and competence grows to the point that he never takes any woman in the harem to bed again, ever, and people start gossiping about the fact that he seems to only want to see hurrem night after night. thoughhhhh that also doesn’t stop suleiman and ibrahim from explicitly kissing and implicitly boning for a good amount of time even after suleiman’s first night with hurrem, and they’ve apparently been in an on/off sexual relationship for some time as early as the start of the series. tbf they do seem to have somewhat broken it off by the most recent arc (though ibrahim is if anything even more passionately devoted to him and their camaraderie remains), while hurrem and suleiman still have scenes that are clearly taking place before or after sex, so i guess dod suleiman’s 100% faithful to her now? make of that what you will.
bottom line is, though, dod suleiman sleeps around much, much less than mc suleiman, and dod hurrem is no question his primary sexual partner in the harem to the point that it would be laughable to say anyone else poses a threat to her. dod hurrem herself also certainly never has serious worries about suleiman falling for another woman, which is a peace of mind in one aspect of her life that mc hurrem probably would have greatly envied. so, again. you win some, you lose some. neither is faithful to history, it’s just a matter of which parts they choose to be faithful to and which parts they don’t. if i had to choose, i’d go with mc suleiman and hurrem. and honestly, it’s just for the vibes and aesthetic. mc suleimen and hurrem, as historically inaccurate as they are, still map decently well onto their historical counterparts in my head. you’d have to cut out many arcs and make some major changes to the plot, but it could work and i could see it working. whereas dod suleiman and hurrem… i simply cannot superimpose them onto their historical counterparts in any way shape or form. dod suleiman’s too different from the impression i have of historical suleiman, not to mention looks like the literal exact opposite of him, and dod hurrem doesn’t have the red hair historical hurrem was noted for either. to me those two are shinohara chie’s characters in an original story that takes place in a fictional empire strongly inspired by the ottoman empire. and i don’t mean that derisively, i really do love dod (toxic bisexual love triangle!!!!! toxic bisexual love triangle where man A and woman A are both pursuing man B but man A’s pursuit is fueled by devotion and love and jealousy while woman A’s pursuit is fueled by pragmatism and ambition, and meanwhile man B looks on in quiet amusement at all the chaos that is being generated) and i adoreeee dod hurrem and suleiman -- but i think overall mc hurrem and suleiman can be more easily seen through the lens of the actual people from history
