Leyla: The Black Tulip is one of the books in the Girls of Many Lands series, set in Turkey during the Tulip Period in 1720.
The main character, Laleena, is a skilled gardener who leaves her home and family to find employment but finds herself coerced into slavery and sent to Turkey, where she becomes a worker of the harems in the Topkapı Palace. Renamed Leyla, she learns how life in the Topkapı Palace harem follows its own rules and rhythms, and she has much to learn about the hidden world of women there. When she reveals her skills as a gardener, she is assigned to work with the Mistress of the Flowers. In the gardens, she secretly plants the tulip bulbs she has brought from her home in the Caucasus Mountains—a reminder of the life which she has left behind and is unlikely to return to.
Tropes in this book include:
- Arranged Marriage: The only type of marriage practiced by the Turkish royals. In some cases, girls are married off as literal children, although the marriage is in name only until the girl reaches a proper age. Princess Fatma was married off in this way at age five and widowed at seven without ever even meeting her husband.
- Caring Gardener: Leyla is a deeply compassionate and selfless young woman with an affinity for plants of all kinds, especially flowers.
- Culture Police: The Mistress of the Servants firmly believes that creating images is heretical to Islam, and thus informs Laleena to never mention painting again. Leyla paints in secret, but ends up imprisoned after she's caught lying to procure ink to paint with. However, one of the princes finds her paintings and, as he does not believe art is heretical, is so impressed that he convinces his similarly-minded sister, Princess Fatma, to release her and employ her as a tutor for painting as well as reading and writing (as Leyla is literate).
- Deadly Decadent Court: While out of focus due to the book centering on the servants, the wives of the harem are constantly scheming for power and are willing to do anything to get it. The servants occasionally get caught up in it, with one girl being poisoned and Leyla herself being mistaken for an assassin by a paranoid prince.
- Disappeared Dad: Leyla's father Aslan was an artist that left to record the war (presumed to be one of Russia's campaigns in the Caucasus) in his paintings, but never returned home. His disappearance leads to his family being destitute and his daughter being sent to the harem to help them. She finds him near the end, and sends him home with the riches she earned from growing the black tulip.
- Gilded Cage: Topkapı Palace is referred to as a "golden cage". The slaves within have great riches but no freedom.
- I Have This Friend: When Leyla approaches the Turkish men, she tells them she "knows a girl" who might be interested in their offer. Everyone involved is aware she's really talking about herself.
- Ironic Nickname: The Ottoman ship that ferries Leyla and the other girls to İstanbul to serve as slaves is named "Hürriyet", which means freedom. Lampshaded when she whispers this is not an appropriate name for a vessel that will steal these girls away from their homelands and marry them off to a stranger in İstanbul
- Made a Slave: Leyla accepts an offer to become a wife to a wealthy man in exchange for compensation to her family, as her family desperately needs the money. She later learns that the story they told was a complete fabrication and what she's actually done is sold herself as a slave.
- MacGuffin: The titular black tulip: many have tried to breed them, but the closest any have gotten is a nut-brown, and there's a reward for whoever manages it. Leyla manages it by the end, then passes her winnings onto her father to send home.
- Meaningful Rename: When Laleena arrives in the harem, her name is changed to a proper Turkish name: Leyla. The same applies to the little girl who was with her and later made a doll, who was renamed from Lena to Semiramis.
- The Mistress: Referred to as "favorites", they're women who have caught the Sultan's eye but are not wives, although some may become wives. Belkis joins their ranks after the harem is presented.
- Mother Makes You King: The sultan has many sons and the ranks are constantly shifting, so it's up to the mother to have her son proclaimed heir and then keep him alive long enough to take the throne. As such, the mother of the Sultan is the most powerful woman in the harem, and the second most powerful person in the Empire.
- Royal Harem: The story is mostly set in a harem, and—unlike most media—focuses mainly on how the harem was the home of the concubine's servants as well. The wives themselves are peripheral characters.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: When the sultan comes to inspect the harem, all of the servants get to dress up in fine clothes for the first time, including Leyla. However, the effect is most clearly shown with Belkis, Leyla's friend, who gains the eye of the Sultan.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: One of the jobs the harem slaves do is taste-testing the meals of important wives. Leyla thinks this is harmless enough, since no one would poison food that would definitely be tested first, until she witnesses a girl collapse foaming at the mouth after eating food meant for the haseki sultana.
- Top Wife: The haseki sultana, mother of the crown prince. Belkis worked for her at one point and hated it, since other wives were constantly trying to kill her and her son.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Once you enter the harem, you are there for life.
