"He must have loved her a great deal." Though, it very likely did not seem that way to Stefan at the time. Loss like that had a way of eating at the heart of a man, though, slowly hollowing him out.
"I was the Turks' favored candidate, and given the power the Ottoman Empire held at the time you can see how I would have had little in the way of opposition." At least until he had begun his rebellion. Then he had very much fallen out of favor.
"We never had festivals like this," he said finally. Not so much an effort to change the subject -- grim though it was -- as it was an observation. "Feasts, certainly; those were always popular, but Hungary was the place to go for lavish celebrations."