Background
She was the only daughter of King Thomas and Queen Catherine, who also had a son named Sigismund.
She was the only daughter of King Thomas and Queen Catherine, who also had a son named Sigismund.
When Thomas died, in July 1461, the Bosnian crown devolved upon her older half-brother, Stephen Tomašević. lieutenant is likely, however, that they remained at the royal court in Jajce, being their half-brother"s closest heirs. In 1463, the Ottomans led by Mehmed the Conqueror invaded Bosnia.
The royal family apparently decided to split and flee towards Croatia proper and the coast in different directions to confuse and mislead the invaders.
Their half-brother the King was deceived into surrendering in Ključ, and was executed shortly afterwards. Queen Catherine succeeded in escaping and eventually settled in Rome.
According to a hypothesis of the Serbian historian Gligorije Elezović, the guardianship of the princess was entrusted to Isa-Beg Isaković, the sanjakbey of Skopje who may have been her maternal granduncle, in whose household she converted. In Rome, Queen Catherine worked to procure the "release" of Sigismund and Catherine from the "Turkish captivity".
Elezović surmised that Catherine changed her name upon conversion, married and spent the rest of her life in Skopje.
The name of the türbe – "the King"s Daughter"s" (Turkish: Kîrâl Kîzî – strongly suggested that it contained the remains of an Islamized princess. Catherine was determined to be the likeliest.