I tell you that they sapped my strength and crazed me with their drugged drink, making me the thing I am, for who can war against their wizardries?
Look you now.

Once I was a prince, the lord of half this land, noble of form and upright of heart, and I loved her accursed beauty as all must love it on whom she turns her eyes.

And she turned them on me, she sought _me_ in marriage; it was that old Rat who bore her message.
"So I stayed the great war and married the Khania and became the Khan; but better had it been for me if I had crept into her kitchen as a scullion, than into her chamber as a husband.

For from the first she hated me, and the more I loved, the more she hated, till at our wedding feast she doctored me with that poison which made me loathe her, and thus divorced us; which made me mad also, eating into my brain like fire." "If she hated you so sorely, Khan," I asked, "why did she not mix a stronger draught and have done with you ?" "Why?
Because of policy, for I ruled half the land.

Because it suited her also that I should live on, a thing to mock at, since while I was alive no other husband could be forced upon her by the people.