Taken Boys: Forgotten Victims of the Ottoman Empire's Devshirme System

During the Ottoman empire, young boys from across the kingdom, usually Christian, were removed from their families, renamed, and trained as soldiers or servants for the empire as part of a "blood tax." Torn from their homelands at a young age, they endured a profound loss: of family, faith, language, and identity. While some rose to power as Janissaries or Viziers, many lived lives marked by silent grief and years of physical and phycological trauma instilled by a system that valued their efficiency as tools above all humanity. The devshirme system was designed to create individuals loyal only to the Sultan, as they had no family ties or loyalties to the traditional aristocracy or other factions within the empire. Open prompt for more context, but 3 hand made collages were used as start images so if you use it to generate you may not get the same result.