Historical Novel, © Kristina O'Donnelly

Constantinople was the final bastion of the once great Roman Empire and of Christianity on Asia Minor. The story of the last siege and capture of this Eastern Star by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, has often been told.

Yet there will always be those who are apt to be moved deeply by its recounting, for it is a solemn tale of courage, betrayal and tragedy, appealing to the core of the universal human heart.
Drawn upon the blood-soaked tapestry of its last decade, Constantinople, My Love revolves around Bianca Romanos, a spirited woman of legendary beauty with Latin and Greek blood, and Kayhan Alkibiades, the handsome and visionary Greek/Turkish general (who is also an ancestor of the 20th
century Burhan Kayhanolu). Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, the third protagonist in this novel, is historically renown for having paved the road to Renaissance through his conquest of Constantinople, yet he has almost never been intimately explored in fiction.

Bianca is the daughter of the Bishop Alexander Romanos, whose goal is to unite the Eastern and Western Churches. He hopes to secure the protection of the Papal Fleet against the encroaching hordes of the Ottoman Turk. Kayhan is the favorite son of the Greek shipping magnate Yhorgos Alkibiades and his concubine, the Turkoman Princess Niesan. Yhorgos espouses the Byzantine Orthodox faction who prefer the Turkish turban to the Papal miter. Doing a brisk international business under the aegis of the Sultan, he is a sworn enemy of Bianca’s father for his determination to fight the Turk to his last breath.

Childhood friends, Bianca and Kayhan are bound with a passion unmarred by the vicious strife between their families, as well as the religious battle that rages amidst their beloved, but soon to be doomed, city. However, as the Crescent-bearing Horseman catapults the Eastern Star towards its eclipse, they will be torn apart by loyalties to family and state.

Bianca embodies the irrevocable past, Kayhan the unavoidable future, and separating them, soars the bridge-in-time, the legendary city of Constantinople....

SABAH ÜLKELERİ  THE HORSEMAN/AKINCI GECE YARISI BORAZANI  SONSUZLUĞA İSYAN