I am so, so happy to have Christina Ståhle visiting my blog today. Why? because I was totally blown away by her debut novel, Before he was Red (see review further down) and reached out to ask her to write a guest post–which she generously has done!
Before he was Red is the story of Hamid (the future Abdulhamid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) and Flora, a Belgian glovemaker, who meet and fall in love -well, so posits Ms Ståhle – in the very tumultuous months that preced Hamid becoming the new sultan. Leaving aside the fascinating political setting – the Ottoman Empire is almost on its last leg, beset by enemies and scavengers from all over, be they the Brits, eager to control things, or the Russians, actively fomenting rebellion among the Balkan states – Before he was Red gives an impressive insight into the extremely restricted lives of the members of the Ottoman princes and their harems. Hamid may be a prince, he may be an heir to the empire, but he is kept under tight control, secluded from the world around him. Better than murdering all potential male claimants as was done some centuries earlier, but intelligent men like Hamid climb the walls of their luxurious prison.
Anyway: I reached out to Ms Ståhle wondering just how she came upon the story of Flora and Hamid. She responded with this lovely post!
The Crack in the teacup
Years ago, I found Flora Cordier in a footnote.
I was reading Joan Haslip’s biography of Abdulhamid II, the last Ottoman Sultan to wield absolute power, when I came across a brief mention of her: in the summer of 1876, just weeks before he took the throne, Crown Prince Abdulhamid secretly married a Belgian woman named Flora Cordier, the owner of a glove shop on the Grand Rue de Pera in Istanbul.
When, months later, Abdulhamid took the throne, she disappeared.
As Hilary Mantel beautifully put it in her Reith Lectures on historical fiction, ‘the crack in the teacup opens a lane to the land of the dead’. For me that crack was the mention of this unexpected love affair. Flora, a successful businesswoman who owned a glove shop in Istanbul during the height of the misogynistic Victorian age. Hamid, the heir to a crumbling empire. They married in secret, and then, the moment Hamid took the throne, Flora vanished without a trace. No records, no official harem entries, just a few lines in a biography and rumours about what happened to her. We’ll get to those later.
First I want to say that those few lines in the biography triggered many questions I wanted to explore. Who were they? What made them risk everything for a secret marriage and what future were they hoping for? Was it love? If so, what happened to it?
I was inspired to take this ‘grain’ and turn it into a living, breathing world. I didn’t just want to write a dry history; I wanted to explore who the man was behind the dynastic role and what kind of extraordinary woman Flora must have been to cross the boundaries of her own world for him.
So, who was Flora?
The historical record on her is sparse. The only official mention of her relationship with Hamid comes from Benjamin Disraeli. In a letter to Lord Salisbury written just after Abdulhamid’s coronation in 1876, the British Prime Minister, quoting intelligence from the British Embassy in Istanbul, wrote: ‘The new sultan has only one wife, a modiste from Pera, a Belgian. He was in the habit of frequenting her shop buying gloves, etc… and much admired her. One day he said “Do you think you could marry me” and she replied “Pourquoi non“.
Pourquoi non. Why not?
Did that exchange really take place? We’ll never know.
But based on the few facts I do know about Flora, I imagine that she must have been unconventional and daring. Charming, no doubt. Bold enough to build a business alone in a foreign city, shrewd enough to navigate Istanbul’s Victorian-era European society. Above all, I imagined that she must have been in pursuit of freedom, that this pursuit drove her to discover the world, to go in search of adventure and, possibly, of love.
What happened to her?
The theories about Flora’s disappearance are vague and undocumented. These are some of the rumours that circulated around Istanbul at the time.
Flora returned to Belgium, then disappeared
By late 1876, after Hamid’s coronation, Flora’s shop on the Grand Rue de Pera was closed, and there were rumours she’d returned to Belgium, where she originally came from. Historical sources suggest that Perestu and others in the palace opposed the relationship, which would have made it difficult for Hamid to bring her into the Imperial harem.
Flora returned to Paris, then disappeared
Before coming to Istanbul, Flora is said to have left Belgium for Paris to work at an important fashion house. The house apparently numbered the ladies of the sultan’s harem amongst its regular customers. These ladies sometimes requested orders to be delivered to the palace, where they wanted garments finished, modified, or redone. One day, Flora was chosen to deliver such an order and sent to Istanbul. She never returned. If this really did happen, it would explain how a young Belgian woman ended up running a glove shop in Pera, catering to both European and Ottoman elite.
Flora stayed in Istanbul under a different identity
Some genealogical records list her with the addition ‘Fatma Hanim’, suggesting she may have converted to Islam and taken a Muslim name. There’s no confirmation of this, and no evidence she remained in Abdulhamid’s life after he became sultan.
But there is this. After one of Flora’s parents had passed away, a heritage was left to her. To trace the girl back, a notice was published in one of Istanbul’s newspapers, inviting her to contact the Belgian Embassy where an interesting message would be announced to her. Two days later, one of the carriages of the harem, escorted by eunuchs, halted in front of the embassy. A veiled woman stepped out and asked what she was wanted for. (Indépendance belge, 7 March 1891)
Was that woman Flora? There’s no trace of her in the meticulously maintained harem records.
And then there’s also this curious story, according to Joan Haslip recited years later by Lady Layard, the wife of the British ambassador to Constantinople. Lady Layard had developed a personal friendship with Sultan Abdulhamid II and was often invited to the Imperial harem. On one such visit the sultan pointed to a little slave girl who acted as interpreter with perfect French. The sultan said: ‘If this girl is better educated than the rest, it’s because she lived as a small child in the house of a Belgian modiste of Pera, a highly intelligent and educated woman.’
According to Haslip, Abdulhamid treated the little girl with indulgence. Was she the daughter of Flora and Hamid?
Haslip continues to say that later, when he learnt that the girl had entered into a relationship with his son, Prince Selim, he sent the prince away. Her punishment was death by drowning.
Did any of this happen?
And who was Hamid Before He Was Red?
We know much more about Abdulhamid. History remembers him as the Red Sultan, a ruler associated with paranoia, censorship, secret police, and the brutal suppression of the 1894-96 Armenian massacres. By the end of his thirty-three-year reign, he had concentrated power into his own hands, eliminated enemies, and manipulated European powers through a combination of cunning and repression.
But in 1876, when Flora knew him and they fell in love, I imagine that he was not yet that man.
He was a crown prince confined since puberty in the palace’s kafes, the ‘golden cage’ where royal heirs were kept isolated to prevent rebellion. He had no political experience. He’d never governed. He’d spent years in maddening idleness, counting steps between rooms, with limited possibilities to study and very little contact with the outside world.
Then there was the state of the empire. I imagine that when Abdulhamid took the throne in August 1876, he must have sensed it was beyond saving. It was the Year of Three Sultans: his uncle Abdulaziz had been deposed and found dead under suspicious circumstances; his brother Murad V’s seventy-day reign ended in madness and alcohol. The empire was burdened by debt and haemorrhaging territory in the Balkans. Russia was preparing for war. European powers circled like vultures.
Did a part of him feel like a captain on a sinking ship? Were there moments when he just wanted to escape the pressure of it all? It’s not hard to imagine that like Flora, he dreamt of freedom.
Why this story mattered to me
If a myriad of questions about Flora and Hamid got me hooked on this story, something else kept pulling me back every time I’d given up on finishing it.
As I spent time with all the real-life characters, not just Flora and Hamid, but Perestu (Hamid’s brilliant but torn stepmother), Reshid (the Jewish dervish-tutor hardwired to survive), Murad (Hamid’s tormented half-brother), Anoush and Siran (the Armenian refugees), I realised that each of them, in their own way, grapples with the same question many of us face: what is the right balance between self and community, and in that context, how to live authentically. This is something I often think about in my own life.
If to live authentically means accepting your freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, not hiding behind the roles society gives you, then Flora lives this way. She chooses, she acts, she takes responsibility. It’s hard, because the price is isolation and, ultimately, exile: when her choices are perceived by society as a threat, she is abandoned.
Hamid chooses differently. He chooses the throne, the dynasty, the weight of empire. He chooses belonging over freedom, belonging over love. It’s a choice that demands courage because it demands he become someone else. The man who married Flora must disappear.
*****
Thank you, Christina (I have now decided we’re on first name basis, you and I) I think the post above highlights all the what-ifs that abound in history, each one probably worth its own novel!
Onto the book:
Blurb:
Ottoman Empire, 1876. Amid the political turbulence of the summer of three sultans, a Belgian woman and the future Sultan Abdulhamid IIsecretly marry. Weeks later he deposes his brother to ascend the throne, and she vanishes without a trace.
With emotional depth and a propulsive plot, BEFORE HE WAS RED reimagines a real but forgotten episode in history of the 19th century Ottoman Empire. On the eve of a loveless marriage, glove maker Flora Cordier rescues a stranger from Ottoman troops—unaware he is Prince Hamid, second in line to the throne, risking death for a single night of freedom. Their meeting sparks a forbidden love and a shared dream of self-determination.
Told through five interwoven perspectives—Flora, Hamid, Perestu (the ambitious stepmother), Murad (the volatile brother-turned-rival), and Reshid (a Jewish dervish-tutor hardwired to survive)—the novel follows their lives as they are drawn into the political conspiracies and colonial rivalries that drive Hamid’s rise to power.
Buy it here! Like NOW!
Galata Bridge, late 19th C IstanbulMy review
In the late 19th century, the hitherto mighty Ottoman Empire is crumbling at the edges. Not only is the empire dealing with external threats, there is also growing internal discontent. Some, like the softas, take to protesting openly. On one occasion, they are joined by Hamid, an Ottoman prince who has snuck out of the palace only to find himself caught up in a maelstrom of violence. In the aftermath, Hamid tries to find help for an injured protester. That is how he, potential future sultan of the Ottoman empire, meets Flora Cordier, Belgian-born shop owner.
The Hamid Flora meets is a man of compassion and ideals. He is also effectively a prisoner within the palace: as a potential heir, he is kept in a “golden cage”, constantly supervised as he may be a threat to the sitting sultan. Ms Ståhle does an excellent job of describing the restricted lives within the Ottoman palace. Eunuchs, wives, concubines, slaves, sons—they are all prisoners of their status, all of them flitting about in a tradition-bound environment that smells of rot. Where Hamid is bored out of his mind, his adoptive mother, Rahime Perestu, has built herself a significant powerbase within the imposed constraints. Perestu is an intriguing character, a strong, intelligent woman who capably protects Hamid from deadly palace intrigues—but can she protect him from love?
Love—or is it passion?—strikes hard. Ultimately, Hamid will have to make a choice between the role he’s been raised for and Flora.
Against a vividly painted background of political tension, Ms Ståhle’s engaging characters lead us through a fascinating, violent and convulsing empire. In-depth research coupled with fluid prose and a deeply engaging storyline makes this a fabulous read. Brava!
P.S. This book qualifies as one of my top three reads 2025.
Christina Ståhle is a Swedish political scientist and novelist. She holds an MA in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins and a degree in screenwriting from UCLA. Born to Swedish parents and raised across Europe and the Middle East, she brings a multilingual, international background to her writing.
Since over thirty years, she resides in Belgium with her husband and their mischievous dog, Suki. When she’s not writing, Christina enjoys her children and friends, reading, forest walks, and learning to tend to her garden. Before He Was Red is her first novel.
Check out her website for more info about her and her book!
You can also find Christina on Instagram | Facebook
What a fascinating and unusual story! Thank you, Anna and Christina.