Roxelana was the chief consort, the first Haseki Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the legal wife of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and the mother of Suleiman's successor Selim II. She became one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history, and the first of a series of prominent Ottoman women who reigned during the period known as the Sultanate of Women.

Born in Ruthenia (then an eastern region of the Kingdom of Poland, now Rohatyn, Ukraine) to a Ruthenian Orthodox family, she was captured by Crimean Tatars during a slave raid and eventually taken via the Crimean trade to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.

She entered the Imperial Harem where her name was changed to Hürrem, rose through the ranks and became the favorite concubine of Sultan Suleiman. Breaking Ottoman tradition, he married Hürrem, making her his legal wife. Sultans had previously married only foreign freeborn noblewomen. She was the first imperial consort to receive the title, created for her, Haseki Sultan. Hürrem remained in the sultan's court for the rest of her life, enjoying a close relationship with her husband, and having six children with him, including the future sultan, Selim II, which makes Hürrem an ancestor of all following sultans and currently living members of the Ottoman dynasty. Of Hürrem's six children, five were male, breaking the Ottoman custom according to which each concubine could only give the Sultan one male child, to maintain a balance of power between the various consorts. However, not only did Hürrem bear more children to the sultan after the birth of her first son in 1521, but she was also the mother of all of Suleiman's children born after her entry into the harem at the beginning of his reign.

Hürrem eventually achieved power, influencing the politics of the Ottoman Empire. Through her husband, she played an active role in affairs of the state. She probably acted as the sultan's advisor, wrote diplomatic letters to Sigismund II Augustus King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (r. 1548–1572). Hürrem patronized major public works (including the Haseki Sultan Complex and the Hurrem Sultan Bathhouse). She died in 1558, in Constantinople and was buried in a mausoleum within the Süleymaniye Mosque complex.

*The novel Roxelana şi Soliman by Romanian author Vintilă Corbul is a fictionalized account of the love story between Hürrem, whose origin is identified as Polish noblewoman Alexandra Lisowska, and Suleiman the Magnificent.

*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxelana# Wikipedia]
*[https://comicvine.gamespot.com/roxelane/4005-173276/ ComicVine]
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