Bewildered, angry, and depressed that the Knights had ransomed him, the twenty-three-year-old prince found himself in an even stranger new land. As on Rhodes, the Knights kept Cem comfortable but under close watch. A prisoner but still a prince, he was placed under a kind of lax house arrest in the well-appointed acropolis of Nice, which was owned by an associate of the Knights, a wealthy Genoese merchant named Gaspare Grimaldi. On Cem’s first night there, Grimaldi’s oldest daughter took a bed-warmer to their new guest, and, if we are to believe the French accounts, offered herself to the prince. Later, her sisters and cousins took their turns spending the night with Cem, suggesting that Grimaldi hoped to marry one of his daughters or nieces into the Ottoman royal family. When allowed to venture beyond the walls, Cem moved on to the city’s female prostitutes and “charming well-made boys; each the son of a noble.” Cem reveled in this sexual diversion. “What a wonderful place is this city of Nice,” he wrote, apparently unconcerned about venereal disease, “a man can stay there and do as he please!”
>>16539202So the French were race mixing cuckolds even in the 15th century. What a surprise
>>16539269They were also gay.
