The Sultan

The Sultan is the ruler of Syria and the central political power in the opening movement of Constance’s Syrian ordeal. He enters the narrative through reports brought by merchants who enjoy his favor, and his fascination with Constance’s nobility develops into a marriage proposal that crosses the boundary between religions. His willingness to abandon the law of Mahomet for her sake briefly makes love appear stronger than dynastic and religious division; the massacre at his wedding feast then turns that apparent triumph into the violent condition of Constance’s further wandering.

Identity and Political Position

The Sultan is introduced indirectly, through merchants who trade abroad and prosper under his protection. Because these merchants stand in his grace, their accounts of foreign lands and noble people reach him with authority. Their repeated praise of Lady Constance, especially their emphasis on her nobility, awakens in him the desire to possess what they describe as an exceptional treasure. His power is therefore first shown as receptive and administrative: he commands the realm, receives reports, and can summon a privy council when a matter requires immediate action.

His position also makes Constance’s fate a public and political question rather than a private romance. Any marriage between them would join the daughter of the Roman Emperor to the ruler of Syria, while the religious difference between them would require a formal decision about the law governing their household and kingdom. The Sultan’s desire thus places affection, sovereignty, dynastic alliance, and religious law in the same conflict.

Desire and the Marriage Proposal

The merchants’ testimony gives the Sultan an idealized image of Constance before he meets her. They speak earnestly of her noble character, and the pleasure he takes in hearing about her grows into an active desire. The narrative presents his courtship as a chain of political effort: once the thought of possessing such a woman takes hold, he expends effort to make the match possible. Constance is treated not merely as a person to be loved but as a treasure whose nobility can enhance the ruler who gains her.

The proposal confronts the Sultan’s council with a religious obstacle. The council explains that Constance cannot simply be accepted under the law of Mahomet, the law taught by their prophet. The Sultan rejects the prospect of losing her and declares that he will become Christianized rather than surrender the relationship. His decision is the clearest revelation of his character: although he is introduced as a Muslim sovereign, personal attachment leads him to place Constance above the religious identity imposed by his political office.

This choice makes the Sultan a figure of conversion, but the conversion is also politically exposed. It does not occur in private or remain a matter of inward conviction; it governs the proposed marriage and therefore affects the court and the kingdom. His love becomes a public act with consequences for every Christian and pagan connected to the feast that follows.

The Wedding Feast and Massacre

The marriage alliance reaches its apparent fulfillment in a feast intended to celebrate the Sultan and the Christians who have joined him. The narrative sharply undercuts the joy of the occasion by warning that gladness may conceal unseen harm. At the table, the Sultan and every Christian who had gone with him are stabbed and cut to pieces. The feast therefore reverses the value of the preceding sequence: the promised union of religious communities becomes collective slaughter, and the Sultan’s choice produces not security but death.

The massacre is not presented as an isolated personal killing. It destroys the Sultan’s political household and removes the protector whose authority had made Constance’s new life possible. The man who could summon a council and command a realm is rendered powerless at the table. His death also places Constance back under the pressure of exile, since the marriage that might have established her in Syria ends before it can provide lasting protection.

The contrast between feast and massacre gives the Sultan’s story its tragic shape. A ceremony associated with abundance, alliance, and public happiness becomes the instrument of betrayal and violence. His conversion appears to have solved the conflict between love and religious law, but the feast reveals that a private decision cannot by itself overcome the hostility of those who reject it.

Constance, Christianity, and Aftermath

The Sultan’s relationship with Constance is defined by a decisive asymmetry. He is the ruler who chooses to change his religious allegiance for her, while Constance is the Christian woman whose presence prompts that choice and whose survival becomes the continuing concern of the narrative. After the Sultan’s death, Constance crosses herself and prays to the cross of Christ, turning from the destroyed court toward divine protection. Her gesture places the Sultan’s conversion within a larger providential story: his political solution fails, but Constance’s Christian identity remains the means through which the narrative interprets her endurance.

The consequences of the massacre extend beyond the Sultan’s death. Constance is carried into a new phase of danger, while Hermengild and her husband, the constable, initially remain pagans in a country described as pagan throughout. Hermengild nevertheless loves Constance deeply, and Constance’s conduct wins affection from those around her. The Sultan’s failed marriage therefore becomes the indirect starting point for another sequence in which Constance’s religious influence reaches people who had not shared the Sultan’s faith.

The narrative later moves away from the Sultan altogether. It turns to the Roman Emperor, to letters brought from Syria, and eventually to King Alla, whose repentance after having his mother slain becomes part of Constance’s continuing history. Constance ultimately makes her way toward Rome. The Sultan does not return, but the consequences of his proposal and death continue to shape the routes, separations, and religious encounters through which her story proceeds.

Narrative Significance

The Sultan functions as both lover and political convert, but his role is ultimately tragic rather than fulfilled. He embodies the possibility that affection can cross a religious boundary, yet the massacre demonstrates the fragility of that possibility when it is placed inside a hostile political order. His transformation is sudden and consequential: the ruler who might have preserved Constance becomes the victim whose death exposes the danger surrounding her.

His story also establishes a recurring pattern in Constance’s narrative. Human arrangements promise protection, marriage, and stability, but those arrangements repeatedly collapse through violence, treachery, or forces beyond the heroine’s control. The Sultan’s court seems to offer an end to exile; instead, the wedding feast renews it. In that reversal, his character becomes essential to the tale’s larger movement from worldly security toward religious endurance and providential survival.