Murad II

Murad II was Ottoman sultan from 1421 to 1444 and again from 1446 to 1451. He defeated rival claimants and campaigns backed by Byzantium, fought Hungary and the forces of Skanderbeg, and won major victories at Varna and the Second Battle of Kosovo. He briefly abdicated in favour of his son Mehmed II before returning to the throne during a period of military crisis.

Murad faced repeated crusading campaigns and internal challenges during a reign interrupted by a brief abdication in favour of his son Mehmed II. He returned to command and defeated the crusaders at Varna in 1444 and the Hungarian army at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. These victories secured Ottoman dominance in the Balkans and created the strategic position inherited by Mehmed II before the conquest of Constantinople.

Simon Turney’s Prince uses Murad II chiefly as the external power shaping the world in which the young Constantine Palaiologos learns to rule. In 1428 the Byzantine state survives through tribute, diplomacy and vulnerable territories in the Morea, all under the pressure of Murad’s expanding Ottoman empire. The sultan’s presence gives Constantine’s journeys and dynastic disputes their strategic urgency: local Byzantine rivalries matter because they unfold beside a stronger state capable of exploiting every division.