Mara Hatton's sudden death was initially considered an accident by her husband, Sultan Murad II. However, when the court physicians discovered during the autopsy that she had not died of natural causes, Murad II, enraged, ordered a major investigation throughout the Ottoman court to uncover the culprit. This was not due to any affection he had for a wife with whom he had not even consummated their marriage, but rather a reactive measure taken because her assassination outside the court made the Sultan feel his own life was threatened.
After a period of investigation, the Sultan's people uncovered several unexpected clues: first, most of the servants surrounding the Sultana on the day of the incident were Muslim slaves, not Christian or Slavic slaves; second, the wine the Sultana drank was made from grapes grown in orchards on farms owned by several prominent Turk families in Thrace, and shortly after the incident, the Greek Muslim stewards who directly managed them all died for various reasons, making it hard to imagine their masters were unrelated to the affair.
After the initial report was presented to Sultan Murad II, the Sultan felt he had some insight: ever since the Ottoman blade reached Gallipoli and set foot on the land of Europe, the prominent Turkmen families and those from the Devshirme system began vying for favor before the Sultan. Although the harem would not normally be involved in such matters, the origins of the concubines already determined who they would be directly and indirectly connected with.
After some deliberation, Murad, for his own safety, still issued an order for a thorough investigation. As a result, the Ottoman court was thrown into chaos during this period, and the divisions among several ruling Viziers and their factions widened. Furthermore, during the investigation, what displeased the Sultan was that his fourth son, Muhammad, uncharacteristically came to see him almost every day, requesting that he severely punish Mara's murderer after the investigation. Although Murad understood the deep affection between his adopted mother and son, Muhammad's persistence eventually annoyed him. After an accidental dispute, the extremely impatient Sultan finally ordered his fourth son to be confined to the palace, sentencing him to half a year of house arrest.
But even so, the Sultan ultimately failed to find a clear culprit. Therefore, in the end, after the Sultan forced all prominent families to swear loyalty to Allah and himself, the investigation into the culprit behind Mara Hatton's death was forced to halt to prevent further internal divisions within the Sultanate. The final disposition made by the Sultan was to execute all Turkmen Muslim servants and most Christian servants who had served Mara during her life, thereby declaring the matter closed.
After this incident, the already suppressed rift between the Turkmen prominent families and the Rumelia prominent families within the Sultanate deepened. Although Murad could continue to suppress it, he could not truly mend or resolve it. However, for the Ottoman Sultanate, which was still flourishing, this rift was not enough to weaken or even divide the Sultanate.
However, the biggest victim of this incident, Mara's adopted son, Prince Muhammad, had already inscribed this matter in his heart and transferred his hatred to those Turk prominent families suspected of being behind it. And her father, George Branković, the Despot of Serbia, who was already forced to submit to the Ottoman, developed a strong sense of crisis towards his suzerain due to the unresolved nature of this incident and began more actively contacting the Christian nations on the Ottoman border, hoping to secure a fallback for himself.
But these were all matters for later. While the Ottoman was thoroughly investigating Mara Hatton's death, Caesar on Bosporus, in his palace in Mangup, had his Chief Minister process documents with him, while he poured a glass of wine on the table, but didn't touch it.
"Caesar, is there some deeper meaning to this glass of wine?" Noticing Caesar's action, Serenus looked at the wine on the table with confusion. A breeze swept through the room, gently stirring the purplish-red liquid, and a clear reflection shimmered on the surface of the glass. It looked like an ordinary glass of wine?
But when the Chief Minister thought this was a treat from Caesar and asked if he could taste it, Manuel immediately stopped him, "Serenus, let me remind you, for your own safety, you absolutely must not drink the wine in there."
Hearing this, the Chief Minister felt very bewildered. But soon his respected Caesar stopped his work, and as if by magic, pulled out a weed from under the table with evenly spaced leaves and a velvety texture, topped with a cluster of blue-purple small flowers, making it look somewhat different from common weeds.
"This is?"
"Aconite," Manuel said bluntly. "It looks no different from a weed, and some with poor eyesight might even mistake it for fodder like alfalfa."
"How blind must those fools' eyes be then?" the Chief Minister couldn't help but mock.
Caesar ignored the Chief Minister's abstract humor and continued, "But it is actually a poisonous plant, an extremely potent and covert poison. According to previous tests, if the dosage is right, it can even rival arsenic, because with current technology, there's no way to detect it."
"Caesar, I still don't understand what you mean," the Chief Minister looked at him, somewhat confused.
"What I mean is," Manuel lifted the "wine" glass on the table and then poured it out the window, "this wine has aconite juice mixed in it." What Caesar didn't say was that the deadly component in aconite was, to be precise, an alkaloid called aconitine. Although it has a slightly spicy taste, after simple pressing and extraction, a few drops into wine can easily mask its original flavor and then take a life…
Just hearing what Caesar said, the Chief Minister instantly felt a chill down his spine. Countless fears also appeared in his eyes as he looked at Caesar, "Caesar, I…"
"Just kidding," Manuel burst into laughter at his expression, "I just had some words bottled up for too long and wanted to say them. Just consider it a terrible joke."
"Then why don't you play this joke on Princess Catherine or Princess Helena?" The still-shaken Chief Minister, after realizing what happened, immediately asked, both angry and amused.
To the loyal subject's questioning, Manuel deliberately acted like a child and played rogue, "Some jokes can't be played on family, and I've already poured out the wine, so don't mind these details anymore."
If the person in front of him wasn't his monarch, Serenus truly wanted to curse, "That's enough already." But since the other party was his monarch, he could only sigh deeply, rubbing his forehead, and before continuing to process the relevant documents, he finally retorted, "Goodness, Caesar, you're 30 years old. Can you please stop doing things like this?"
"Chief Minister," at this, Caesar shrugged and chuckled playfully, "for Saint Mary's sake, you can't live to old age if you're always so stressed."