Are you new to the site, Ketank?  If so, welcome.  I don't know a great deal about how harems function (should that be functioned?) though of course I have heard of them but anything on screen about them has been from not very reliable western films.  Would things work similarly for the Empress in the various Chines empires that have existed in the past?  Many, many years ago I heard some readings (not the whole thing unfortunately) from a book about the last great Empress of China but I can't find anything about that book on the internet.  Not that the internet is infallible - I made a mistake about the meaning of a French word on another thread by looking online!!!

Addendum!  Well of course I'm familiar with the story of Scheherazade who kept her life by telling the tales of the 1001 nights (yes, I know Scheherazade was fictional).  I only know some of the tales though, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves and Aladdin - mind you, I don't think the version of Aladdin in British pantomime bears a great deal of resemblance to the source material!

Ketank,

thanks for this aspect of the Ottoman empire...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valide_sultan

I heard about something similar in China...for instance the empress dowager of the last emperor of China...
And indeed something common in a lot of countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_dowager
it was also many times the case in the history of the kings of France...

Ketank, if you are knowledgeable about the history of the Ottoman empire, I was many times intrigued about the entanglement between wordly and religious power, while that in European history was much less the case, until it ended in the separation of church and state...or was that not intrinsic to the Ottomans but more to the Islam?

Kind regards from Paul.