The two ladies of interest imprinted there, Konstanze and her maid, Blonde, retain their virtue and plan their escape, with the help of their lovers beyond the walls. The Pasha captures the lot of them, but, being a real gentleman, he renders them liberty on grounds of love conquering all.
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This is a rather Rococo gloss on the way harems worked, but it isn't miles off. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visited harems in Constantinople in the 1720s. She found them, compared to London drawing rooms, rather free and easy places and her take on Ottoman slavery was quite provocative.
‘I cannot forbear applauding the Humanity of the Turks to those Creatures,’ she wrote, after a visit to the slave market.
'They are never ill us'd and their Slavery is in my Opinion no worse than Servitude all over the world.'
Lady Mary may have had rose-tinted spectacles, but she at least put her money where her mouth was: she became the first European to accept the Turkish practice of inoculation and bravely had her beloved son inoculated against smallpox.